Not True! False, I Say!

My silly news service tells me that this is going to be one of the big toy sellers this Christmas season:

Her name is Baby Born With Magic Potty, she comes in all kinds of different colors, just like people, and she really pees and poos. Just like, well, you know.

I have no problem with this. I am aching to say that I think it's really weird anyone would want a doll that pees and poos, but I have no right, because I really wanted one when I was little. And that is how I know that this part of the article ain't true:

"Launched in 1991, the crying, potty-going doll was the first to boast 'human functions.'"

Not true! False! It may have been launched in 1991, but if so then she was not the first. Because by 1991 I was 22 years old and had long outgrown my fascination with things potty (what? I said I had. It grew back since then, but I had), so the one I wanted must have been around whole decades earlier.

She was called Baby Alive, and if you fed her applesauce it would come out in her diaper, and my friend Dusty Lee had one. Dusty Lee was so cool. As if you can't tell by her name. That was her first name -- Dusty Lee -- and she refused to let it be abbreviated. You couldn't call her Dusty, or Lee, or whatever her last name was (I forget her last name, because we always called her mother Mrs. Nuts. She kind of was, a little bit, but the name came from the Mr. Peanut watch she always wore. Anyway...)

Dusty Lee had Baby Alive, and we fed it applesauce and it came out in the diaper, and then we went and played with something else, and when we came back there were ants crawling all through Baby Alive!!!! In her mouth, through all however-many feet of her pretend intestine, and out her diaper hole. It was creepy.

And that's how I know I can no longer trust metro.co.uk Weird News Service. Which is too bad, because the next story is about a Roumanian cart-horse getting arrested for driving drunk. I happen to know the legal blood alcohol limit in Roumania is zero.

So he probably only had, like, one light beer.

A Poo Story: The Encore

I went back the next day and there was no smell in the house, of pee or poo or anything. But neither had she used her litter box in twenty-six hours.

So...

I have either been saved by the miraculous mercy of a very sparsely-peeing cat, or I am the best cat trainer in the world -- having conditioned her in one short day to do her business in a secret place. Or else her bladder burst and she is slowing dying of urea-head.

She seemed fine when I was there, though. Refused to play and hissed at me and everything. So that's a good sign.

Right?

A Poo Story

My Lady is away this week, and when My Lady goes away, I take care of her cat. For most people, this might involved popping in every few days and scattering some crunchy bits about, but this is My Lady's first-ever cat, and she's still under the impression that it actually notices when she's away. That it (get this) actually misses her.

I kid because I love. My Lady is a Dear Heart, and her concern for the lonely beast stems from her empathetic tendencies towards everything. So when she's away, not only do I feed and water and change the litterbox, I also stick around for an hour or two and "play."

Damn cat wants nothing to do with me, so "play" usually means I throw a mouse a few times, get ignored, and then sit reading a book while Damn Cat hisses at me until her throat gets sore and she stalks off to bed, but My Lady pays me well -- I mean, not Leona Helmsley well, but well enough -- and so I do it. Plus, because she is a Dear Heart, I would do anything for her she asked, even if she didn't pay me.Yes, I would.

So anyway, yesterday, I dropped Johnny at a dentist appointment (long story; get to it another day) and went to My Lady's house to visit with the Damn Cat. Johnny caught the T up there when he was done, rang the bell, and came in for a minute to use the bathroom before we went home.

The toilet is another thing My Lady is particular about regarding Damn Cat. She thinks, if you leave the lid up, Damn Cat is going to fall in and drown. I know there's a very slim chance that this will happen, but how hard is it to put down a toilet lid in order to indulge someone you love?

Hm. Where have I heard that question before?

No, no, the cat did not drown. He did leave the lid up -- and the seat, for that matter -- but he also, fortunately, closed the door. Unfortunately, the litterbox was behind it.

I smelled poo as soon as I walked in the house -- although it's not really a house. It's really just a two-room condo, which explains the concentrated odor. The half-bath we're speaking of is off the hallway that connects the rooms, directly across from the elevator that I enter the condo through -- so I smelled it and saw the closed door at the same time.

And what did I do first, you ask? Why, I called Johnny!

"Johnny!" I said. "You closed the bathroom door and now the cat has pooed somewhere and I'm going to have to tear this house apart to find it, and then clean it up and put everything back exactly where it was! Who knows how long that could take? And what if I don't find it!?"

"I'm sorry, hon," he said. "I didn't know."

"No, I know you didn't know. And at least you saved her from drowning."

"Want me to come in and help?"

"No, by the time you get here I'll have found it, hopefully. Jesus. Hopefully."

The best way to do this, I figured, was methodically. So I tore apart the kitchen first -- fewer places to hide, easier to clean up. The kitchen is really just a corner of the living room and, needless to say, it wasn't there. This Damn Cat knows which side her bread is buttered on, and she certainly knows better than to shit where she eats. (How do you like that idiom twofer? Pow!).

I moved on to the lving room, and then the corner of it that serves as an office. Moved everything, sniffed everything, shook everything, put it all away. Like Yukon Cornelius, though, I kept coming up nothing (but at least I wasn't dumb enough to taste my searching tools). I already knew it wasn't in the hallway, since the hallway hasn't anywhere to hide, so from the office I went directly to the bedroom.

And there it was. In a little pile. Smack-dab in the middle of the bedroom's berber rug.

You know, maybe the best way to do this would have been to walk through the whole house first, and then begin searching methodically.

So I picked it up with a little baggie, and I scrubbed the carpet with vinegar and a rag. I think it's clean. I'll know for sure when I go back tomorrow and it's had a chance to dry. Unfortunately, if it isn't, and I have to try again, it won't have a chance to dry again before My Lady gets home. This is not the part that disturbs me, however, because I know the smell is gone and if there is a stain then I'll just tell her it was puke and come back with Resolve.

No, the part that disturbs me is that, even after I found the poo and picked it up, I did search the bedroom, and then I searched the kitchen and the living room again. Nowhere -- despite the fact that the Damn Cat had been alone in the apartment for about twenty-six hours -- nowhere did I find a trace of pee.

Oh...my...God.

(I am dead)

Would You Rather...

...be able to read everyone's mind all the time, or always know their future?

This is a toughie. Hearing all the thoughts that swirl around could surely drive a girl insane pretty darn quick. All those accents, first of all! And the setting everything to a little tune. Not to mention the insecurities and the psychotic ramblings, and the random, never-to-be-fulfilled, spontaneous desires -- whether of the jumping-on-a-stranger or -in-front-of-a-bus variety...

As if it didn't go without saying at this point, my own thoughts keep me plenty busy, thanks.

On the other hand (and here is where my occasional and shocking altruism rears its inconvenient head), if I had to see  what lay in store for every single person I ran into, I'd feel obliged to become some sort of superhero/preacher on constant spoiler alert -- warning strangers of the consequences of their every minute decision:

"You don't want eat that supermarket sushi!"

"Take the bus today, just trust me!"

"He has CRABS!"

(Yes, that last one I probably would holler at those decibels. I've never had crabs, myself, but I almost did. And, as a preventive measure, I took the cure. It ain't no fun, I tell you what. So if I were a superhero I think I'd make crabby (becrabbed?) people my bete noire.)

Anyhoo, it's also true that, in seeing people's futures, you might get to see some things that are good. Prizes won, professional success, certain hated houses burning down, the births of lots of babies (if you like that sort of thing, or the non-births of lots of no-babies if you don't) -- maybe just a really good night's sleep for a change, or that long-awaited, elusive, healthy poo. These are all good tidings, tidings I'd be thrilled to be the bearer of.

Although, when they say you'd "know" their future, do you suppose that means you'd actually see it? Hm...

Because those last few tidings that I listed, I'm really not so sure I'd want to watch.

You're up! What would you rather do?

Here's Mud In Your Eye

Oh, man. I'm so sorry. This is one of those questions. I've read it already, and now I can't even think of anything pithy to start off the post, so let's just just get it over with, shall we?

The game is called Zobmondo and you can buy it here, and if you're going to play you have to (I'm sorry) choose, you can't say "neither" or make up a third option.

Sigh.

Gather round.

WAIT A SECOND!!!

This is my blog, right? My game (sort of)? And my rules?

Well then I say we don't have to answer every question! I say we get to skip the disgusting ones (would you rather dive into sewage or maggots? My ass! Neither!), and the boring ones (be named Dick Hertz or Ben Dover? Feh! Either!), and the stupid ones (buy only used furniture or only used vehicles -- hello, hi, have we met? Both!). I say we get to answer just the ones that tickle our collective fancy. And since y'all don't get to see the cards, that means it's up to me to choose on your behalf.

Ready? Okay!

Gather 'round!

The category is food ingestion, and the question is:

Would you rather drink a glass of three-day-old aquarium water -- OR -- water from a toilet bowl that has been flushed?

Hey, I never said the ones I chose wouldn't be disgusting. I settled on this one because I thought it would be easy.

We had an aquarium when we were little. We had an aquarium loonngg after we had any fish left in it. At least, I think there weren't any fish left. It was a little hard to see the inside through the sludge that I have to assume was something very akin to primordial ooze. Maybe, if we could have seen the contents, we'd find we had convergently evolved ourselves a coelacanth!

(D'ya like me big words? I wuz a bio major! Had to look up how to spell coelacanth, though. I always did want it to be spelled coelo.)

Anyway, when I read this question, the first thing I pictured was that tank, and the last surviving catfish who tried so valiantly to keep up with the housekeeping. He failed -- there's none who wouldn't. in his place, but there's none who could've possibly tried harder -- and the tank descended into a pit of black-green stinking death. Or life, I suppose. Technically, no matter what it smells like, algae is officially alive. At least it was when I was hangovering my way through all those bio classes. Hang on, let me check... Yup. Still considered an "organism," which still means "living creature, even if it never does anything but reproduce, and smells like dirty socks steeped in rotten-breath juice." Phew!

You never know with these things. Like, when I was in school, wolves couldn't mate with dogs because they were two different species. Now, apparently, they're the same species and they can. I don't mind the species re-classification so much as I dread the day the "designer dog" people catch wind of the change. They'll cross a wolf with a wolfhound and end up with a twelve-foot shaggadoo that spends its whole pathetic life trying to rip its own throat out, until finally it gives itself a case of terminal whiplash and dies of starvation because it keeps falling over sideways when it tries to put its head down in the bowl.

Where was I? Oh yeah.

I picked this question because it seemed easy: compared to that aquarium, a recently-flushed toilet is a breath of fresh air (assuming it's a clean toilet, which it doesn't say it's not). But then I noticed that it says "three-day old aquarium water." And I have no idea what three-day old aquarium water looks like. I guess we have to assume there are fish in it, and that they're being fed. How much doo do fishes do? And does this hypothetical aquarium have a filter in it? I think it probably does, otherwise it would be called a fishtank (I just made that distinction up, but I'm going to stand by it).

So the real question is: would I rather drink something that contains filtered but decidedly present remnants of Poecilia reticulata (look it up), or something that has little more than a recent memory of the distinctly human kind?

Hmmm.

I suppose I'd rather drink a memory.

It would be a nice change of pace, considering how usually I'm drinking to forget.



Oh, and we also won't be pondering the next question, which is: "after deciding you don't want to marry Mr. Big Bucks beacuse he was cheating, would you rather give him back his three-carat ring -- OR -- keep it so you can sell it later?"

We won't be pondering because there is only one right answer, and that is: you would RATHER keep it, but you WOULD give it back. End of discussion.