CSotD: Post-Holiday Stress Disorder
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According to my counter, many of you were able to ace Bug Martini's "Caring About Family" test yesterday. Welcome back.
Though, while the demands of the holiday may keep people from making their appointed rounds, if my own experience was at all typical, it didn't mean putting the phones away entirely, because there was likely a lot of "Have you seen this?" and pulling up of "Meet Your Second Wife" and so forth.
So no need to feel sorry for the Internet.
I did find that, between people spending Christmas with family and people being generally repulsed by how toxic Facebook has become lately, there was a lack of the normal traffic there that suddenly brought all my Muslim-friends-in-other-countries to the fore.
It was a refreshing change, and I was kind of tempted to like all their stuff just to alter the mix when everyone else came back, but most of them post in languages that Facebook's Bing translation tool can't make any headway on.
Not that it isn't willing to try. Asking Bing for a translation is like when you ask a stranger for directions and, about two sentences in, you realize he's got no idea at all, but that he's not going to let that stop him.
(Incidentally, you can cut-and-paste such posts into Google translate and get an at least coherent, if not eloquent, rendition. I have no idea why Facebook relies on Bing, which, to cite SNL a second time, has always reminded me of the Steve Martin "Common Knowledge" quiz show, in which the questions are provided by educators from Princeton University and the answers are provided by a survey of 17-year-old high school seniors.)
Juxtaposition of the Day, Yuletide Rodentia Division
(F-Minus)
Hamster gags are not so common that having two in the same day isn't kind of notable to begin with, but this juxtaposition should have come with a trigger warning, because it cued up some guilt and I may spend the rest of the day curled up in a corner.
Back in the early 80s, we had a neighbor two doors down whose boys were the same age as ours — kindergarten and third grade, as I recall — and there was a lot of back-and-forth between the houses.
So one Christmas, when she was headed out of town to spend two weeks with her folks and I had mine coming into town, she offered to let them stay at the house in return for my watering the plants.
And taking care of the hamster.
The plants seemed to be more of a challenge, because she had a list of which ones got what amount of water on what days, while the hamster just needed fresh food regularly and a clean-out once a week, which is to say, twice overall.
So after a week, my folks went back East and I put the hamster in his plastic ball so he could roll around while I dumped his cedar shavings and then put new ones in. Then I put him back in his house, which was a Habitrail plastic thingie. And the rest of the week I just checked his food and water.
When another week had passed and his owners were headed home, I went back, put him in his ball, refreshed his cedar shavings, and replaced him in his plastic Habitrail home.
And the next day, the phone rang and it was the neighbor who had just come back and said, "What happened to the hamster?"
I didn't know anything had happened to the hamster. Last time I saw him, he was in his nice clean little home.
But the reason I've specified the Habitrail thing is that, unlike a cage where you have actual hooks or hasps to lock the door shut, these plastic habitats have a round thingie with one edge cut out, and, to open it, you turn it until the cutout matches the edge of the door, and, to close it, you turn it until the cutout doesn't match the edge of the door.
Which is not as binary as "Is the hook in the eye?" or "Is the hasp shut and flipped down?" because, if the circular thing isn't completely turned 180-degrees so that the cutout edge is completely away from the door edge, a clever hamster can jimmy the lock.
And, once he's got the door open, he's not going to be like the hamster in Pearls and lock himself up nice and safe in the plastic ball.
If his owners' house was built in the Jazz Age, for instance, he might even head for the lovely brass scrollwork over the furnace ducts, through which a hamster doesn't even have to squeeze.
Though, as easy as it is to find his way in, the likelihood of his finding his way out again is nil, since the ductwork is slippery metal and includes a lot of vertical drops.
And not only are the metal ducts slippery, but they're also echo-y. Even someone very, very small running around down there is clearly audible throughout the house.
Until they stop, of course.
Which might have happened before the owners came home, if Houdini Hamster had pulled his trick the first time I cleaned his damn cage instead of the last time.
Also I would have only had to water the plants for that second week, but we won't dwell on that.
Thing is, if I'd known in time that the little shit had taken off, I might have just quietly replaced him.
If I could remember his white/brown fur pattern, that is, though I think all pet hamsters are genetically identical and come from a single pair who live in the tool shed of a farm in rural Maryland.
All of which sounds like the premise for a sitcom. I just wish it didn't sound like the premise for an episode of Seinfeld.
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