New bunny!

January 31, 2009 at 5:15 pm (1)
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Jan 31 2009 Can you tell I did this comic strip when we were under six feet of snow? Most of that has since melted, although I notice a layer of disgusting wet sleety ice posing as snow outside my window this morning.

Anyway, in other news, there’s a new bunny in town. He’s an albino named Fanger Bane who DESPERATELY needs to be neutered so that a, he stops annoying Skukzilla, b, he doesn’t get KILLED by Skunkzilla, and c, he stops spraying my house. One more week — we already have an appointment.

fang2 Anyway, so this is Fang. That’s not a camera flare — he’s an albino rabbit, so he has red eyes. I don’t usually like to buy pets from pet stores, but Fang (Fanger Bane) does come from Petland.  He has a hard luck story of his own, though. If you look carefully at his right ear (on your left) you’ll see a tear in it. That’s because, when he was just a little guy, my hyperactive little baby leaped out of his enclosure into that of another male rabbit. A fight ensued and Fang had his ear torn up.

The pet store subsequently had to take him off the floor for over a month while he healed. By the time they brought him back out, he was a big bunny and nobody wanted him. The clerk told me that people would say, “Oh, I’ll wait until you get some more babies.” So when all was said and done, Fanger was at that pet store in his little enclosure for over four months.

That’s why I took him home, and all th ose people are stupid. Fang is an AWESOME bunny. He likes to play tag, he’ll cuddle up to you, and he’s incredibly gentle — with me, not Skunkz — no biting or anything. He’s also very curious and has his nose into everything although so far (cross fingers) he doesn’t seem to be much of a chewer. He tries to climb walls sometimes just to see what’s on top of them.

And once he’s neutered, the bunnies should be able to live in peace. Skunkz will already lie beside him when he’s in the cage. They stretch out together with the cage door between them. If I let him out, it takes him about 30 seconds to upset that little dynamic and then the fur starts flying (literally. Big clumps of it). I’m hoping neutering solves the problem!

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Lost is Back!

January 24, 2009 at 8:36 pm (1)
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jan24

This actually has happened to me — this question, I mean. Not having grandchildren without having children. Because that would be weird, not to mention genetically unlikely.

Great news for Lost fans — it’s back! Hooray! I know a lot of people are really down on Lost now. It was so popular once upon a time, but people got annoyed with it for many reasons, some of them justified.

Justified reasons for hating Lost include:

-constant shaky camera work
-new episodes alternating with three weeks of repeats
-wondering whether it’s in any way possible to actually resolve all of the plot points they’ve brought up or if they’re just flying by the seat of their pants at this point
-Charlie’s death in the last season was both stupid and pointless (you’re underwater, dude — why don’t you just grab your buddy, run, and swim to the surface? Was the self sacrifice REALLY necessary?)

Stupid reasons for hating Lost include:

-too many new characters (deal with it)
-complicated storylines (as long as they do eventually go somewhere with it then who cares — in fact, the more complex the better!)
-pushing the countdown button — a, they don’t do that anymore, and b, it’s clearly part of a psychological experiment by the Dharma Initiative (or whoever). Although I do admit that by the time they actually let the button run down I was very, very happy to see it go.

And now, great reasons to LOVE Lost:

-Sawyer. ‘Nuff said.
-Intricacy of past storylines and future connections that come together suggest that they are in fact going somewhere with the various storyline
-It’s never what you expect
-Characters are interesting, realistic, and well-developed — no one is perfect, and even Jack the hero turns out to have a pretty checkered past (not to mention future)
-Some awesome one-liners (Did you just throw a banana at me? -I was out of rocks.)

Anyway. Go watch Lost.

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Another Eulogy

January 17, 2009 at 4:45 pm (1)
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Jan 17 2009 I have actually woken up this way.

About two years ago, my beloved hamster Hamtaro the Hamster King died, and I wrote him a (if I do say so myself) stirring eulogy, the text of which can be found in an article published here.

That being said, I can hardly do less for Kirsty Trickster. Kirsty, first introduced on this blog here, died very suddenly last week of a stomach blockage. We’re still not sure what caused it, but her death was both fast and unexpected — less than 24 hours between the onset of symptoms and the time her heart stopped beating.

kirsty

Kirsty Trickster: March 2006-January 2009

Those of you who know me, or who visit me on Facebook, are already familiar with how she died, so I won’t go into that any further than I already have. However, as I said, having eulogized  the hamster, I feel I should do the same for the bunny.

I found Kirsty Trickster in a cage of excited baby bunnies and brought her home in a box. At the time, she was a cuddly, timid bunny, a prime target for her soon-t0-be idol, Skunkzilla the Savage Bunny. After a few weeks of frustration, Skunker decided that she didn’t hate Kirsty after all. Kirsty, who had fallen in love at first sight, followed Skunkz around pretty much for the rest of her life.

As Kirsty adjusted to life at home, my sweet and innocent little bunny underwent a transformation and became something of a holy terror, attacking and destroying anything from blue jeans (often while I was wearing them) to books to bedsheets. She had a particular fondness for books, so if I came across a particularly bad one — so bad, for example,  that I felt guilty exposing the rest of the world to it by giving it away — I passed it on to the bunny, and derived a certain amount of satisfaction from watching her systematically destroy and eat it. The remains of her favorite book are still sitting on top of her favorite box. It used to be a hardcover novel, but all that now remains is:

-a small chunk of cardboard that used to be the front cove
-a selection of about fifty pages from the middle of the book she hadn’t gotten around to eating yet

That being said, we are relatively sure she didn’t die of a paper blockage.

Kirsty liked to cuddle up with Skunkz, but on rare occasions she’d allow people to hold her, too. She frequently expressed her pleasure in life by racing around the house, doing little flips, and making sudden jumps several feet into the air. When we first moved to the new house, it took her several weeks to master the concept of stairs, but once she did she spent a solid hour racing up and down them, occasionally pausing at the bottom to make sure I’d noticed.

While Skunkzilla moves like you’d expect someone named Skunkzilla to move (kaTHUMP, kaTHUMP, kaTHUMP), Kirsty was eerily silent. She’d often vanish, and I’d walk around the house calling her name only to turn and find her directly behind me, looking at me as if to ask, “Yes? What do you want?” She had a knack for getting into trouble but she was also cute, funny, sweet, and very, very much loved.

We both miss her, Skunkzilla in particular, and hope she’s found her way to bunny heaven — or, as one of my students would have it, “hevan.”

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JCVD: Actually Good!

January 11, 2009 at 12:03 am (1)
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jan10 Sigh… isn’t this always the way it goes?

So I’ve just been to see the rather unfortunately named Jean Claude Van Damme: The Movie.Somewhere along the way, some marketing genius convinced them to simply put JCVD on the movie posters — good call. I almost didn’t go because it has such a laughable name, but I’m very glad I did. Make no mistake: this is NOT your typical action flick from all-but-forgotten actor Jean Claude Van Damme.

Guess what? Van Damme can act. I know, it came as a huge shock to me, too. Maybe it’s partially because he spends most of the movie speaking French instead of working in his second language. Somehow, though, I think it’s more that no one in Hollywood ever actually looked at Van Damme as an actor  — more as a vehicle to drive a bunch of plotless action sequences.

The movie is about Van Damme, a fictionalized story with a little too much truth in it to be totally comfortable with. There’s a very powerful monologue where he reflects on his life — coming to America, living in poverty, and realizing his dream — and wonders what he’s accomplished on this world. Perhaps the most interesting to me was the bit where he starkly contrasts karate training, and the people he met in the dojo, with acting, and the people he met in Hollywood. The dojo, he says, taught him to trust people, while Hollywood taught him that some people are just out to mess with you. Interesting that the place where he learned the skills of violence that would later make him famous was, in the end, a lot more peaceful than where he wound up.

One of the more interesting lines he has to offer: “I’ve been around. I’ve traveled a lot. I find it hard to judge people. And people find it hard not to judge me.”

Anyway, I’m impressed. They’re billing the movie as a “comedy,” which it isn’t, really — although there are some really funny moments. More of a mockumentary/biography/satire/thriller.

So go see it, is the point I’m getting at. Even if, like me, you lower your voice when asking for tickets to “Jean Claude Van Damme, the Movie.”

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Go figure, the government fails us again

January 4, 2009 at 3:45 am (1)

Jan 3 2009 It felt very strange to type 2009 on this comic. Huh.

I hav e a bone to pick with the government of Saskatchewan. Well, not just the government, actually, also the weather network and all the other geniuses out there reporting on road conditions.

Here’s the thing: at this time of year, with all the snow and wind and whatnot (we live in Canada; we accept it!), they’re always encouraging us to DRIVE SAFELY. And they need to encourage it — it’s amazing how many people, in spite of living their whole lives in this country, forget how to drive the second they see anything white on the ground. But one of the things they always encourage you to do is check the highway forecast before you drive ANYWHERE.

Fair enough. But here’s the thing: if you’re not providing accurate, up to date highway forecasts, is it really reasonable to expect people to use them?

Let me back up. I drove today from Saskatoon to Lethbridge — 650 km, more or less. It’s a long way, and the weather’s been bad, so I checked the highway conditions this morning. There was a very worrying section between Medicine Hat and Swift Current that was listed as poor visibility, icy and slipper conditions, and not recommended for travel.

Well, I’ve put off this drive as long as reasonable, so I decided to chance it. The roads were fine all the way to Swift Current, so after that I started to think okay, I’d better get ready for all of this horrible weather with it’s nasty visibility blah blah blah. Except there wasn’t any. The roads were absolutely, 100% fine. It was sunny, there wasn’t any snow blowing, one of the two lanes was perfectly clear and the other had a bit of snow and ice on it (again, it’s WINTER). And before anyone suggests the conditions changed, the weather network and the gov’t of Sask both still had the exact same conditions listed — I checked.

OK, so it’s a service. So it’s free. Whatever. That doesn’t mean it should be completely, totally, and stupidly inaccurate. If you want people to check the forecasts, post accurate forecasts. Otherwise, don’t bother. Is that really asking so much?

On the bright side, my bunnies are very happy to be home and expressing their pleasure by running around, doing little jumps and spins, and basically making me smile. So all’s well that ends well, in the end.

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