So, you may have noticed the cute little icons now positioned squarely above my ranting space here.  They are there to keep score of the number of rats that have been dispatched in my apartment.  More specifically, my pantry.  On the third shelf up.

We’ve enjoyed a quiet, yet slightly strained peace with the varmint that had apparently made a home somewhere in the great mysterious places that they do such things.  We were content to completely ignore him as long as he left our food and such alone, and he seemed content to remind us that we should never, ever leave a bag of garbage on the floor — we, being too lazy to bring it out to the dumpster after yanking it from the can and putting a fresh bag in it’s place — by eating a hole in the side and dragging a few pieces of said trash out to nibble on.

When it first happened, I made a complaint to the apartment powers that be.  In their infinite, unquestionable wisdom, they rapidly dispatched a crack squad of Death Mexicans to promptly squirt liquid foam in a few of the holes they half-heartedly looked for.  And when I say that they looked for them, I mean they really got busy opening the two doors under the sink and calling it a day.  I slept better that night, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that our apartment was now locked up tighter than a hummingbird’s tweet… a real Fort Knox constructed entirely of Jell-O, proof against even the mightiest of rodents.  If it was really, really tired.  Or dead.  Maybe.

So, we turned a blind eye and hoped for the best, even seeing our little houseguest as a cute little feller that would scurry under the dishwasher when we wandered into the kitchen.  Until, that is, we found that several baggies and boxes of food in the pantry had been chewed into and panty-raided in the night by that furry rapscallion.  This, as they say in the industry, was war.

I went out and bought a trap… but not just any trap mind you.  I’m a technical boy living in a digital world, and frankly I love gadgets.  I stood there in the Isle Of Doom at the local Home Depot, staring at all the medieval devices used to dispatch creatures great and small (where was all this when I was bitching about my neighbor playing his stereo too loud while I was trying to sleep?).  I was wondering if I could deal with the nastiness of a spring trap that may not kill the thing outright — or worse snap a piece of it off, making a hell of a mess.  How about the squeal of a rodent caught in a glue trap, slowing starving to death.  Poisons aren’t really all that effective in the strength you can buy from home improvement stores (oh, how I miss Barber Labs in NOLA!), and if they do work, you end up with a dead rat in the walls making a stink.

Then I saw it, and I swear there was a shaft of light shining down upon what I had been searching for without even knowing it.  The Victor Electronic Rat Trap.  Now, I wasn’t sure at this point if we had a rat or a mouse, but my roomies had described it as being about three-ish inches long.  Big enough for this baby.  It was a bit pricy at $39, but what the hell, I had to have it.  No sir, no analog traps for me.

Now this trap is, for all practical purposes, a taser in a rat-sized housing.  When you turn it on there is about a five second hum… that would be the capacitors charging up from the four C batteries it uses.  There are three metal plates in the floor of it, and when the critter stands on two of them he becomes the last part of the circuit and ZAP! he gets the full charge and his heart and brain stop working so well.  He is instantly killed, in what is billed as the most humane method on the market today.  No slow death from poison or a poorly snapped trap and no tortuous starvation in a glue trap.  No muss, no fuss, and the trap is infinitely reusable.  My only concern was if I was going to be able to convince a rat to climb in this sucker, regardless of the bait I used.

The bait of recommended choice from Victor is peanut butter.  A small dab of it in the back of the trap should be enough.  We also found that the varmints are crazy-go-nuts for sunflower seeds — removed from the shell, of course — owing to the fact that the bag in the pantry was chewed into, and there were remnants of the seeds everywhere.  I had initially placed the trap on the floor along the baseboard leading to the panty, but GonzO had the genius to put it on the shelf in the pantry, at the scene of the crime.  I added a couple of seeds just outside the trap opening, a couple of seeds in the peanut butter, and a seed or two in the middle of the trap.

This my friends was the magic combination, and we had our first victim that night as we slept.  Deader than Jimmy Hoffa, we found a rat (not a cute little mouse, oh no) in our contraption… clean and exterminated.  We re-set the bait and trap thinking that maybe, just maybe, there may be another one creeping about — an accomplice as GonzO put it.  We were not disappointed.  Not one, but two rats died at our hands the next night; GonzO happened into the kitchen on the way outside for one final smoke and noticed the corpse in the trap, cleaned it and re-set the trap, and another had bit the dust by the time we woke the next morning.

Let me tell you, this was the best forty bones I’ve ever spent on pest control.  I heartily recommend it to all you faithful readers out there.  It’s the best entertainment money can buy.

So, now I need to go and file another complaint with the apartment folks.  This time, however, I’m going armed with (as of this writing) two dead rats in zip-loc baggies.  I decided that after the second rat, any more that I collected would be disposed of in the manager’s office.  If I was going to be disgusted by this, they were going to feel my pain and at least be disgusted by it too.  I have been discouraged by my loverly wife against walking into the office and tossing the baggies onto the manager’s desk from a distance of a few feet, making a satisfying thud.  She says I should save the real drama for later, if need be.  I am also inclined (but will not… rest easy my dear) to ask for a refund on my rent to the tune of the cost of having an exterminator come out, since I’m doing that job already, and more effeciently at that.

If my camera was with me, I’d catalogue the kills as I go — alas, it is not.  Maybe I can convince GonzO to take pictures of them as they make it to the morgue.  At any rate, keep an eye on the Rat-O-Meter up top as I keep score.

Sleep well, gentle readers.  Try to ignore that little pitter-patter in the night… if it’s not followed up by an electrical snap, it’s no fun at all.

Wow, I’m disappointed that this guy has to resort to using his hands.  Some people can do that with a single solitary muscle… to the amazement of others.  What a fucking amateur.

Yo — pretty ladies around the world, got a weird thing to show you… so tell all the boys and girls.  Tell your brother, your sister and mama too, cause they’re about to go down and you’ll know just what to do.

Wave your hands in the air like you don’t care.  Glide by the people as they start to look and stare.  Do your dance… do your dance quick mama.  Come on baby; tell me what’s the word.  Ah — word up everybody, say when you hear the call you got to get it underway.  Word up — it’s the code word — no matter where you say it, you’ll know that you’ll be heard.

Now, all you sucker DJ’s who think you’re fly, there’s got to be a reason… and we know the reason why.  You try to put on those airs and act real cool, but you got to realize that you’re acting like fools.  If there’s music we can use it — we need to dance.  We don’t have that time for psychological romance.  No romance.  No romance… no romance for me mama, come on baby tell me what’s the word.  Ah — word up everybody.  Say when you hear the call; you got to get it underway.

Dial “L” for love; come on, all you people say word up.

Word up.

Here’s some quick and dirty:

I’m employed… finally.  Been working for about three weeks now.  The job is good and keeps me on my toes, figuratively and literally.  It’s nice to have some income again, and frankly it’s a relief to have something to do during the day that doesn’t involve some clever new way of cleaning the lint from my bellybutton (that only happens on the weekends now).

I’m hopelessly obsessed with Cheapass Games.  Thanks Andy, I’ve managed to unconsciously put this off for two years and now you’ve gone and raped my willpower… you fucked it dry and made it bleed.  Now, OCD-Boy has been unleashed — be ascared, be very ascared.

I have had the opportunity to hang out a bunch with half of the crew who are now living their lives here in A-Town and that makes me very, very happy.  I have also not been hanging out with the other half very much, and that makes me a sad panda.

My 4-Runner was hit from behind and damaged a bit, but since it wasn’t my fault I didn’t have to pay a penny for repairs (oh, and nobody was hurt).  I also was not in the truck at the time and never saw the damage done to it… and frankly my brain has almost managed to erase the whole event because of that.  Weird.

Battlestar Galactica — the new series.  Well done and hurry up with that third fucking season already!

I love Kurt Vonnegut.  Here’s what he has to say about freedom of speech:

"… and ten or more years ago now, when students and some authors were insisting on the right to use any damn words they pleased, this was perceived by many easily frightened people as a form of assault.  They were right.  The primary wish of many free-speech fanatics was, I am certain, to bop prudes around.  That’s always fun.  But something beautiful came out of the legalization of all the funny, endearing, ugly little words.  We were not only free to mention any part of our bodies we damn pleased, thus improving our mental health and our understanding of ourselves to the extent that we are machines.  We were free to discuss anything!  When I learned politeness at my mother’s knee — God rest her soul, God rest her knee — I learned not to offend anyone by discussing excretion, reproduction, religion, or a person’s sources of wealth.  We are free to discuss all those things now.  Our minds aren’t crippled anymore by good taste.  And I can see now all the other more sinister taboos which mingled with sexuality and excretion, such as religious hypocrisy and ill-gotten wealth.  If we are to discuss truthfully what America is and what it can become, our discussion must be in absolutely rotten taste, or we won’t be discussing it at all."

Kurt is a Humanist.  Go figure.

And that’s all I have for the moment.  There may be static on this station for the most part, but every so often a program comes in clear.

I cannot believe how extremely happy I am with a recent decision I made.

About five months ago, Heather and I were at lunch just talking.  One of the subjects that came up was that of tattoos.  Many of our friends have tattoos, and most have gotten them to celebrate or remember some particular event that has happened to them.  I was saying that I thought the concept was a cool one, but that I just didn’t personally have anything that I felt was momentous enough that I would want to have a permanent symbol of on my body.  I had no idea that an event of epic proportions was only about a week away. That’s when Katrina hit.

No need to go into all of that again, as all of the gang from NOLA suffered losses of one proportion or another.

So, Stuff and I are currently visiting friends and family and enjoying Mardi Gras.  A lot of the people that had relocated to Austin had discussed getting tattoos, and I had already decided that I was going to get one.  A small group of us got the idea that we should go get tattoos while we were in.  We knew of two reputable tattoo shops in town where friends had already had work done, and of the two I found an artist whose work I liked.

Low and behold today I got my first tattoo.  It took about two hours, and wasn’t as painful as I thought it was going to be just a bit uncomfortable to have to straddle a semi padded board for such a long period of time (there are just certain body parts that are quite disconcerting to have fall asleep).  While he worked on the outline it wasn’t too bad.  Just a few spots that were more sensitive.  The fill was more intensive and there were moments when I squeezed my hands together a little tighter and tried to concentrate more on the beat of the music playing and less on the needles digging into my back.  I was thinking that there was about another half hour to go when the tattoo artist said he was done.

I’m really quite pleased with the results and cannot quit smiling about it, or stop talking about it.  I’m glad that I had it done in NOLA too.  The only worry now is, where will I put the next one? 🙂

Happy Mardi Gras everyone!

Well, we still don’t have jobs yet, but my life is slowly but surely starting to feel like mine again.

We just spent the last three weeks putting together costumes and make-up for "Carnaval".  This was the 29th year of the event, which is held for one night from 9pm till 2am and consists of "Brazilian music played on Brazilian instruments and sung entirely in Portuguese", and throngs of people in outrageous costumes dancing and having a great time.

I have to thank Shortbus for that, because had she not found a great fansite about Carnaval we might never have known that such an awesome event was being held just a couple of blocks from our apartment.

Shortbus, Gonzo, Doug, Stuff and me all decided to give it a whirl.

I have to say that for the first time, in a very very long time, I felt like myself.  The high that I experienced was not unlike any one of the parties we had at the wHoReS except that there were a lot more people and most strangers.  For a change, I wasn’t worried about not having a job, or having lost our home or anything else.  I just enjoyed the music and the people.

I could have been anywhere just celebrating, but I was in Austin, TX.  How lucky am I that I had to leave one great city like New Orleans, but be able to discover a city that seems to be just as groovy.

For now, I’m still on an emotionally charged high from all the people, and what can only be called rejoicing.  I still miss our friends and family and the life that we had, but I’m glad to start to see that life appears to be going on.  So, "Vivo!" my friends, which the English to Portugeuse dictionary tells me means "Live!".

So, I might as well write it here because the delivery time and distance are the shortest possible, and the postage on my site hasn’t gone up 2¢.  Yet.  The government can achieve all manner of miracles theses days, so it’s only a matter of time.

So, the Austin vortex is capturing another two hapless, helpless souls… this time from the left coast.  Welcome D & A, let’s hope you can at least stay on the event horizon and get jobs (that you enjoy) within a reasonable span of time, unlike the mass of bodies worm-holing their way around the far reaches of the many universes known and unknown.  We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the whole house deal works out in your favor and that the property isn’t located on the one and only earthquake fault-line in the state, which consequently would be exactly the length of the lot.

On a more personal note I’m still looking for acceptable, gainful employment.  I have managed to fill that void with coffee snobbery — a new and meaningful force in my life.  It started with the simple, yet powerful need to replace the coffee maker that was manufactured during the Roosevelt administration — when coffee was untreated tap water filtered through road gravel and dried beetles, "and by god we liked it that way" — which admittedly was free, but in the same vein so is yellow fever, and neither of them is good for your kidneys.

So, after much research and opinion asking, I bought a 12 cup French press pot and an electric kettle.  Why the electric kettle do you ask?  Need you really ask that question?  Yes?  Ok.  The electric kettle is for rapidly heating the water to a boil (4-5 minutes for 8 cups of water cold from the tap) and turning itself off when the temperature is within 195 to 205 degrees which is the magic range of temperatures with which to extract all the goodness from the beans without leeching out the bitterness.  Yes, I have the badge to prove that I am a coffee geek.  It’s right next to the beer snob badge on my sash.

I could very well have bought an automatic drip coffee maker and saved myself a little bit of effort in my pursuit of a cuppa’ joe, but frankly it is only a little bit more work to use the press pot.  I also get better tasting coffee because the optimal conditions are met for brewing — drip coffee makers either under or over heat the water, and the water doesn’t spend enough time in the grounds for proper extraction.  Finally, I’d have spent over $100 to get a drip machine that was at least better than half-assed at what it does, and I spent less than that gathering up all the fun gadgets to make coffee my way.  Frankly, with a cheap thermometer and a little extra time you can just use a stove-top kettle and simply shuck out the $40 for the 12 cup French press pot and be done, but where’s the fun in that?

I’ve also been made the bitch of a board game called Settlers of Catan, more specifically, the expansion Cities & Knights Of Catan.  Think tabletop Warcraft.  It’s an amazingly well designed game that forces you to use your brain for complex strategies, and has awesome replay value.  I’m not the only one addicted to it, both Lady and ToppledGod have tasted it’s sweetness and are drawn to it like a junkie is to a little baggie of smack.  We have the Californians to thank for this phenomenon.  I think they were setting us up to be their thralls before they breeze into town and take over.

Austin remains an awesome town to live in, in my opinion.  I’ve been riding my bike around Town Lake a few times a week, and it never ceases to amaze me how picturesque a setting it is, how many people are out there running/walking/biking at any given time of the day, and how much "smoking hot trim" is included in that crowd.  In keeping with my angry roots though, I am never far away from the urge to knock a few of those motherfuckers off the path and into Town Lake if they don’t stop hogging the available space for people to pass them.  I mean c’mon, the path is only about 6′ wide and if you assholes walk three or more abreast (or even worse, two mommies with their extra-wide athletic strollers) so you can gossip and otherwise chitchat, then that leaves about 2′ for everyone else to use.  Bear in mind that this is a 2-way path and that remaining 2′ is to be used by folks coming the other way and folks passing your slow ass up either on foot or bike.  Can you see my frustration here… I gotta’ slow my speed to a walking pace (a pain in the ass on a bike) and wait for oncoming foot traffic to clear before I can pass you, when I should have been able to do it easily in the middle space your are currently occupying.  These buffoons notwithstanding, it’s still a pleasant ride.

And that’s all I have to randomly gibber about today, kiddies.  Catch you another time.

Due to requests, I have posted on Craigslist my recent plea to my neighbor… and here’s the link.  Help give me some anonymous fame by flagging it for inclusion in the "Best Of Craigslist" by hitting the button at the top.

The Lady and I made a brief trip back to NOLA because the bulk of our immediate families (both sides) would be in the same general zip codes for the first time since the hurricane.  While in town I made some time to go and take care of a few minor errands at the old WHoReS.  Since I had to sledgehammer the front door off in order to get into the house last time, I had my faithful manservants Fiddy and GonzO go and install some boards over the gaping hole that used to serve as the front entrance (a bit slapdash, admittedly, but I don’t think neatness was an issue anyway).  First and foremost I needed to paint my house number on the boards since the originals were on the demolished door.  I also couldn’t help but notice the newly acquired mounds of crap in the front of the house that wasn’t ours, and consequently, the utter lack of crap that we threw on the lawn during the recovery operation.

I went to the back of the house to have a gander in the garage to see if there were one or two tools I could recover, and found none.  As I came around the corner heading to the back door something caught my eye.  In the ocean of dead and brown vegetation there was a green mass that stuck out like Mayor Nagin at a Clan meeting.  I started to chuckle to myself, this was just too strange.  "What is this?" I asked myself as I approached for a closer look.  I stood there for a second, and as the realization of what I was seeing dawned on me, the evidence to back it up came into sharp focus.  I bent double, hands on my knees, and laughed for a solid five minutes.  I laughed until my sides hurt and tears were streaming down my face.  A pumpkin patch had sprung up in the back yard, just in front of DeJockamo’s little nook, and there were actual pumpkins growing on the vines (a bit under ripe, but pumpkins none the less).  The seeds were likely a remnant from the Halloween party — a full year ago — and I had been mowing the little sprouts down every time I cut the grass without much knowing it.  I had noted what looked like a little pumpkin seedling when we went to scavenge the house last time but promptly forgot about it.

This was the perfect poetic moment.  In the aftermath of a disaster that has wrought nothing but destruction — including the death of most all vegetation — the WHoReS threw up it’s fists and shot the bird with both hands at Katrina.  A final "fuck you too, cunt!" from the spirit of the house that loved Halloween so much that it grew a full blown pumpkin patch just to defy that damnable storm.  The WHoReS got the final word, and it used its last breath to say it.  This made me indescribably happy.  It lifted my spirits, and put a spring in my step.  Frankly, I think that little cluster of vines gave me some strange form of closure, exactly what I needed to say goodbye to the WHoReS and move on a bit.  The groovy thing is that there were lots of little blossoms on the vines, and blossoms mean new pumpkins.  I can’t wait to see what that patch looks like in a month or so.  I hope that fucker takes over the entire back yard.

As I drove out of the neighborhood, I saw a few signs of activity.  Folks were gutting houses in preparation to rebuild.  There were however still many signs that a terrible force has passed through and left an indelible mark on the city and it’s residents.

We were invited to dinner and Christmas tree trimming by Lisa and Slinky.  A wonderful meal, some wine and good company was to be had.  At the end of the visit, there was a beautiful tree to behold.  I also learned a lesson: the old adage "let sleeping dogs lie" is only true if you are sure the dog isn’t faking it, and really, would a face this cute lie to you?

In the absence of anything actually constructive to do, my fellow apartment-mates have lost their minds.  I present to you Exhibit #1 and Exhibit #2 which are the events of a cat (and dog) fight that resulted from a difference of opinion about some music being played at the time.  There was much screeching, giggling and bra strap snapping.  It’s was loud enough that the neighbors were either going to call the cops, or record it as audio porn for later use.