Goodness knows how I happened to become an expert in rat-buying. First of all, I've never been particularly fond of rats: I've had imaginary kittens as pets before, yes, but the closest I've gotten to the rodent world is my entirely fictitious hamster, Lisbeth, who gets namechecked at the top of my journal, but who is never mentioned in its pages. Second of all, I never had such a pressing need for a rat that I had to go buy one--in fact, I conjured up the kittens as a sort of spiritual safeguard against them. But the other night I was drinking Scotch and eating plantains at that hip new plantain restaurant, Plantain, with my onetime editor and second ex-husband, Douglas Conifer Vinciennes, and after he commented that the banana was going extinct, he said:
"Nonnie, you still willing to stoop to work on the women's books?" (Women's Books, in Douglas's world, are not romance novels or Virginia Woolf novels or She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb, but rather fabulous, glossy women's magazines that are devoted to a little bit more than fashion.)
"I guess," I said. "I'm pretty busy with, you know, the anthropology, and also I've been contributing to these erotic-science-fiction anthologies, but, you know, I have a place in my heart for the women's books."
"Great! Listen, old lady, one of my old mistresses is the EIC at the new Hearst title, Cannibal Blonde, and she needs somebody to do a feature on rats."
"Tats?" I queried. "Like, tattoos? That's so funny, because I was just reading Sylvia Plath's "The Fifteen Dollar Eagle" and I was thinking about doing some kind of freelance thing about the tattoo-artist-as-shaman, maybe interviewing people about their relationship with their tattooist, and you know, there could totally be a humorous compare-and-contrast chart about tatooists versus hairdressers . . ."
My former lord and master cut me off. "Nope," he said, "Not tats. Rats. Apparently rats are the hot new fashion accessory for the urban thirtysomething set."
"Oh," I said. "Did you sleep with that lady when you were married to me?"
He looked at me with warm, misted eyes. "I wasn't married to you long enough to sleep with anybody else, my kitten."
And so I wrote this feature.
Well, it's good to hear you've taken an interest in small rodents. My friend, after watching the show "Hamtaro" decided to get hamsters. within three months they had overpopulated and resorted to cannibalism. We decided they needed population control but Fatcat was so outnumbered and/or lazy she wouldn't eat any of them even when we put her in the cage. So he set them free into the wild, casting the kinslayers into the land of nod as it were. I'm sure rats might do the same thing but it's ten times more disturbing to see two hamsters fighting over and eating the carcass of another hamster. Especially when you know for a fact they never showed that on "Hamtaro"
In non rodent related events I just had to edit one of my books and add margins and chapter/page headings for my editor. This strikes me as being odd but she's also a well reputed agent and once she and I edit it she'll represent it so I'm happy. By the way when you say lettuce cigarettes do you mean green tobacco? wacky tobacco? or fake wacky tobacco? I've never been the victim of this but have heard of dull friends who were duped into smoking lettuce that cost them a hundred and fifty dollars an ounce. Wouldn't it be cool if I didn't put an ending on this and just dropped off? But now I've mentioned the ending which rather prepares one for the eventuality of the end of this post. I suppose next time I'll try it without all this.
Posted by: Political Boy on octobre 2, 2003 03:44 AMThat certainly is terrifying. My imaginary hamster never did anything like that! But that's because she was the only hamster.
The lettuce cigarettes are fancy cigarettes made with lettuce & some other stuff--maybe other legal, edible herbs and vegetables--and they are advertised as such on the lettuce-colored, refreshing-looking packages they come in. They aren't actually refreshing, though.
I feel like you'd have to be pretty stupid to think a bag of lettuce was actually kind bud. First of all, can you dry lettuce out enough to make it look like pot? Maybe, but what about the smell? Maybe you could mix in some real pot to fool 'em, but still. I would expect $150 worth of pot to smell pretty strongly.
More about pot later, once I update my journal about my vacation.
Posted by: an Anonymous Blonde on octobre 2, 2003 08:10 PMI have a hamster and I had a rat. The rodent thing isnt for me is all I've learned.
Posted by: Juliana on octobre 5, 2003 09:02 PMIn all my years of not smoking I've never heard of such things but they do sound terribly unrefreshing. You see the thing about buying things that aren't pot as best I can tell is that all my friends who have done it bought from people they didn't know (stupid!) while they were either drunk (stupid!) or stoned (stupid stupid!) So that explains the scamming, that and people with very little experience, I was in high school at the time after all. Of course then there's also people who say "Yes!" when the dealer pulls a sample from his pocket and not from what they're buying (STUPID!) so yeah, kids, don't buy drugs... the wrong way.
Posted by: Political Boy on octobre 9, 2003 01:43 AM