Would You Like Some Barbecue Sauce With That Crow?

Okay, I hate it when I have to eat my words. But in this case, it's worth it.

I recently wrote a rant about my "dark night of the blogger's soul" (to use my friend Jason's words) and said the following:

I've been thinking about getting a pet rat ... But I don't want this blog to become a daily recitation of what my pet rat did and how funny it was when he fell off the chair, and how cute he is when he stands on his hind legs and sniffs the air. It's fun to hear about my nieces and nephews in those ways, because they're people I love and care about. But no one wants to hear about a rat. Not even me.

But I've had a change of heart. Here's what did it:

I found my little ratties! I found them on Craigslist today and they're already reserved for me. Furthermore, I'll be getting weekly photo updates so I can see how they're growing.

Here's what the breeder said about them:

They were born on April 8th. Right now they look like they're going to be agouti (which is dark brown mixed with black and silver hairs). Both boys are almost identical, except one is slightly bigger. They might change appearance as they grow older. They're both very pretty and healthy-looking. I'm positive they are going to have very friendly personalities. Their mother is an exceptionally friendly and easygoing rat. The boys will make excellent companions.

And here's the interesting thing: I'm surprised by HOW excited I am about getting them. I knew I wanted a rat, and thought it would be fun, but I'm actually sort of embarrassed by how giggly and goofy I get when I think about them. I kept looking at the pictures all afternoon. Here are the other ones:

They're ready for their closeup, Mr. DeMille.

Happiness is a warm butt in your face.
(Which ones are mine? Obviously the most studly ones.)

I haven't named them yet, because I don't want to jinx the whole thing. They're not really mine yet, so I have to consider them still sort of "in the womb," so to speak. But I'm thinking of names now, and welcome suggestions.

So, I'm telling you right now, I have to face up to the fact that this blog just might have an occasional—or even frequent—"it was so cute when..." entry.

And as of this afternoon, I'm completely okay with that.

It's Snowing Outside.

I saw this on Susan's and Heidi's blogs, so I decided to do it too. Here's what you do: Search for a picture on Google (or Yahoo!) Images in each category. Post an image from the first page of results.

Age on my next birthday:


I. Can't. Believe. It.

A place I'd love to visit:

India. One of these days, definitely.

One of my favorite places:

Yellowstone Park. A surreal, alien landscape right in the middle of an incredible forest.

One (really two) of my favorite things:

Laughing. And baby animals. (And baby animals laughing.)

One of my favorite foods:

Burgers. No contest.

My favorite flower:

Passion fruit blossom. I discovered these on a walk around my neighborhood in Venice, California, and couldn't believe how intricate and detailed they were. I loved the feathery purple fringe around the center. Which brings me to the next category...

My favorite color:

Purple. And not just because it was Donny Osmond's favorite, either. (Though that helped.)

The city I live in:

Salt Lake City, Utah.

Name of a past pet:

Poochie. (When I did the search, I hoped Homer Simpson's short-lived Itchy and Scratchy character would show up, and he was the first result!)

A nickname I've had:

Erin the Red Baron.

My first job:

Dry cleaning counter girl at Seville Cleaners in Santee, California. Cathi had it first, then Kristin, then me and Denise Huff. It was like the 5th ward job to have, and it was the first place I got high (from machine fumes). I just thought that unloading the machine was so funny.

My hope for 2008:

Happiness. Vague, I know. I'm still trying to define what would make me happy, so I'll have to get back to you on that.

The Blog in the Mirror

I'm conflicted by this whole blog thing. I've started blogs before, and then let them lapse into stale antiquity from neglect.

Maybe I just need a journal. I don't have a cute kid to blog about, and my life is pretty uneventful so it's not like I need an online forum to keep everyone abreast of my many comings-and-goings-about-town. And I definitely don't need one more place in my life to rant about things that make me crazy.

So then I'm just left with commenting on things that strike me as unusual, or commenting on other people's blog entries that I find entertaining. It becomes a spiral of commentary on someone else's commentary on someone else's commentary and, after a while, gets so diluted there's no point to remembering the original commentary.

I've been thinking about getting a pet rat, mostly because I'm allergic to cats and freaked out by the all-consuming neediness of dogs. And rats actually respond to their owners, and can bond and be affectionate like cats and dogs. But I don't want this blog to become a daily recitation of what my pet rat did and how funny it was when he fell off the chair, and how cute he is when he stands on his hind legs and sniffs the air. It's fun to hear about my nieces and nephews in those ways, because they're people I love and care about. But no one wants to hear about a rat. Not even me.

So this blog...well, I don't know what to do about it. I like being able to communicate with people once in a while, but I probably wouldn't be able to write anything intensely personal or meaningful, and the idea of just having a place to write sardonic commentary on random things doesn't seem that interesting to me lately.

So here's what I'm wondering:
1) Why do you blog?
2) Do you have different blogs for different audiences (i.e., a more personal site vs. a hobby site)
3) Do you think my main problem in blogging is just not having much of a life to talk about?

Thank you in advance for your input.

Food snacks for post-millennials?

I always thought it was strange that some movie theaters in Utah sold dill pickles at the concession stand, but here's something even weirder: pickle-juice popsicles.

Sure, pickle juice isn't new. Throughout history it played a major role in the childhood game of "I Dare You to Drink Whatever I Find in the Fridge and Mix Up in a Cup," from suburban homes of middle America to ramshackle yurts on the windswept plains of outer Mongolia.

But popsicles? For a yummy treat? I don't get it. Okay, okay, I know there're people out there who love pickles and who might even drink pickle juice from time to time. But let's face it, there are people out there who eat paste or dirt—or other non-edibles—but we smack it out of their hands (if they're kids) or treat them for a mental condition instead of capitalizing on their unfortunate predilection with a new line of Paste-a-roonies® or Tastee Mudd (now 98% Pesticide Free!).

I'd write this idea off as going the way of the tequila lollipop with the worm in it—you know, where people buy them as joke gifts or eat them on a dare—but the website says they're marketing pickle-sicles to schools. For kids.

Apparently pickle juice is good for you. And, according to the website, "almost sugar free." Huh.

I guess, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe pickle-juice popsicles aren't that odd. I mean, we live in a nation where Clamato is a real product.

Chuck hoped his fresh new 'do would help him with the ladies.

It didn't.

Feliz Cumpleanos, Glee klee ker Kaburtstag, Gratchu layday mayday hoggen

In my random wandering through blogland, I came upon the coolest entry about childhood birthday cakes. It made me remember some of the highlights and not-so-highlights of birthday celebrations past, which are presented below for your entertainment:

Highlight: The best birthday cake I ever had was my Leslie cake. I think it was my fifth birthday (you know, the party where I got to invite friends), and Leslie Lindgren was my on-again-off-again boytoy. He was a blond Adonis, overly affectionate and unashamed of our love. The cake was a masterpiece, a two-layer pile of frosting emblazoned with a big pink head with blond hair and blue eyes. It was a perfect likeness. Of course he was at the party, and I can't remember his reaction at seeing himself on the cake, but I can't think he minded. I mean, seriously, we used to play "marriage" in front of the house, walking somberly down the sidewalk to the corner where we would exchange vows and, sometimes, a hasty smooch.

Not-so-highlight: The most ghetto cake I ever had was on my 12th or 13th birthday. It was a simple family affair, and I had requested an angel food cake. Because we were going to put strawberry topping on it after it was cut, it was unfrosted and looked a little naked on the plate. We had run out of birthday candles—not surprising with everyone having birthdays willy-nilly around there—so we McGyvered a solution by spearing the cake with a foot-long fireplace match. "Sing fast, everyone, this baby's burnin like a mutha."

Most of my cakes were the typical frosted cake mix in a 9x13 pan. For some unknown reason, my parents were fond of taking the birthday picture at the very peak of the candle blow, so we have many, many photographs of us kids with bulging cheeks and eyes like crazed fanatics at a balloon factory.

Somewhere along the way, I think it was my mom who banned pictures of the candle blow. "Please, Jer, let me have one photo of my child looking normal." It's a wonder we didn't all end up at the Sevick Center.*

* The Sevick Center was a school for children with developmental disabilities. We used to sneak over the fence after hours because they had all the coolest playground equipment on spongy black mats instead of sand.

My eyebrow may say, "No, no, no," but my 'stache is saying, "Yes, yes, yes!"

Brain Games Keep You Young

In his 1893 treatise entitled Formative Yataghans of Optomaetria, the eminent scholar Ubaadah Czismadia posited that Athalassian cretacea were an integral canon in the diametrical philology of early “Naïve Realism,” so called because of its tenuous use of E.A. von Diltenschmiel’s Taenioidea Hypothesis. In later epochs, oligarchs such as Sangilak contravened in defence of the oft-cited Cillecroix-Ortule paradox, in which Dravidian expert Ermenegildo Smelah asserts that Albrecht Yohjalian’s whole context is irrevocably intangible. However, the 16th-century scroll has long been considered an atavistic subrepresentation of antilapsarianism. In terms of today’s redactionist thinking, do you agree?

When Question Mark was young, he wanted to be a period.

Tell Me What You Want to Hear

It's hard for me to be myself sometimes, because I'm not sure what that even means. I don't consciously pretend to be someone else or anything, it's more like I censor my words or my actions based on who I'm with at the time, or how well I know them.

I smile and say, "No problem," when inside my head I'm shooting imaginary darts tipped with green poison from my eyes while using every obscene gesture possible until my imaginary hands are paralyzed with exhaustion.

Here's me, being real. For just a few minutes.

* Today at lunch we played "If You Decided to Go Postal and Shoot Up the Office, Name the Three People You'd Kill." I had no problem coming up with my first target. At all. I'd pull the trigger with no qualms. The other two on my list were a little harder. You have to really hate someone to want to kill them, so my remaining choices ended up being the kind of people where I wouldn't hunt them down specifically, but if I saw them at the back of the pack running away from me down the hall, I'd definitely take a potshot or two.

* I don't like super-strong old-lady perfume. Someone here wears it. My nose is assaulted every time I walk to the restroom. My cube neighbor feels the same, and today he came back to his desk and said, "It doesn't smell like old-lady in here. It's funeral home. Like, dead people's makeup." I'm keeping that. DPM. A perfect description for so many things.

* I thought I was going to win today. But I didn't, and I was mad. When I said, "Good game everyone," I was really thinking, "Maybe I want to change my list of three people."

* In Spanish, the word Sudan means "they sweat." I think that's funny. It's really hot in Africa.

* Last night, while watching How it's Made, I kept giggling like a fourth grader every time the narrator said, "P.U. leather" (when describing the special materials they use in making goalie pads).

* I often do surveys online and I lie a lot, especially when my answers are making me seem lazy/unmotivated/loser-ish—or when I want to feel more successful in life than I really am.

Whew. Sometimes honesty feels good, even when it's bad.

Muskrat Susie's gone downhill since she started hitting the pipe.