Elections.

I've been following the republican nominee race with various levels of closeness for the last four or five months, and it has definitely had its share of awesomeness. Notably, Herman Cain Quoting the Pokemon Song, Michelle Bachmann claiming that HPV vaccinations cause retardation, and, as a bonus slice of fried gold, Newt Gingrich revealing his plans to build a Moon Base. Yes. an honest to goodness moonbase. Still, none of those things brought me even half the joy that this comic I stumbled upon did. Go, ahead, click that image on the right and enjoy.

P.S. When I Googled "Michelle Bachmann" to get this clip, Google politely offered to finish for me "Michelle Bachmann Sexy". Wtf? Who is searching this shit?


A few days ago as I was feeding ol' Salamandy McGee, the sacrificial cricket clung to the edge of the tube instead of conveniently falling out. I tried to "scrape" it off onto the sides of the tank, but it wasn't letting go. Eventually I resorted to swinging the tube erratically in an effort to shake the little bugger (heh) off, and I accidentally flung the diminutive chirper directly into the water dish. As it started to drown, I panicked, but then with the clarity of mind that only comes in moments of crisis, I heroically scooped it out with my bare hand, and triumphantly deposited him on the safety of dry ground.

It was pretty comparable to a mother lifting a truck off her baby in a surge of adrenaline; one of those once in a lifetime events that get made into terrible lifetime movies. I was feeling pretty full of myself and superman-like after my rescue, but alas, the feeling would be short lived. Mere moments after the cricket was deposited onto the "safety" of dry land, Jethro darted out of his log and scarfed the little guy down before it had even shaken the water off of its legs. Talk about a letdown.

Speaking of letdowns, I was driving the other day and I saw a cop driving and texting at the same time. I was super excited and wanted to take a picture of him on my phone for evidence, then was crestfallen when I realized I couldn't...

Crickets and Worms

I mentioned before that I have a pet salamander; I caught him fair and square as he was crossing the street several months ago. My diligent google-based research on the care of salamanders informed me that crickets are the best food for them. Being the responsible* and dependable* person I am, I promptly went to the pet store and bought a bag of crickets for Jethro (the best salamander name ever) to consume. Have you EVER tried to extract only a single cricket from a bag of 25 of its living, jumping brethren? Its about as easy as typing with chopsticks while blindfolded. I finally managed to do it by just barely opening the bag, squeezing out most of the air, and then herding a single cricket towards the opening from OUTSIDE the bag while holding the whole mess above the tank. It took about 10 minutes. Unfortunately in my zeal I had forgotten that crickets, like MOST animals, need air to survive; The remaining 24 crickets were dead in about 2 hours. Well, I'm not doing THAT again.

* The claims made in this post are not evaluated by the FDA

Since that accidental massacre took place, I've been feeding Jethro a steady diet of mealworms, waxworms, nightcrawlers and other things used as live bait.

As much fun as it is to store vermin in my fridge behind the yogurt, I recently decided to step up my care for Jethro. I went out and got him some new moss, cleaned his tank all nice, and even decided to give crickets another try. Thats when I discovered THIS contraption. You put the crickets inside, with some food, and they crawl up into the little tubes to escape the light. When its time for some of them to get eated, you pull the tube out, evict as many of the tenants as you please, and then replace the tube! The guy who invented this is probably some kind of evil genius. No doubt he spends his off hours stroking white cats and designing elaborate ways to kill Mr. Bond.

My nephew saw the cricket box yesterday, and excitedly asked me when I had gotten pet crickets. I told him they weren't pets, I was only keeping them so I could feed them to Jethro. He screamed "NO YOU CANT FEED THEM TO HIM, THEY ARE TOO CUTE". It took me a long time to calm him down, but at least I wasn't feeding him mice.