*or: If Wolfhounds were Horses then Midgets would Ride**
**originally mistyped this as "...Midgets would Rise." Would dwarf zombies be better or worse than normal zombies? Can't decide. Maybe worse, if they rode undead wolfhounds.
Due to a weird internal reshuffle the job I was going for is no longer open, but another one is, so now I'm applying for that. To those of you who spent the day wandering around in a fingers-crossed daze, apologies for the inconvenience.
I have two days off work this week! (They are tomorrow and the next day, and then it is the weekend.) This is good because today my colleagues started singing "My Humps" and I went so postal I almost went Rural Delivery* and then I hung up on a really fucking rude-ass customer because my finger just slipped onto the 'disconnect' button by accident and then when he called back, damn if it didn't happen again (and then I went on break). So a four-day weekend is in order. I should probably point out that the two days off were booked in advance and not suggested by management after this afternoon's disconnecting spree.
*apologies to Joff, who was there when I thought of this phrase and probably does not find it 'fresh' any more
Have a fun day, everyone! I am going to have a fun day.
Warning: only read on if you want to hear a fairly dull story about spiders (not the one about the time that my colleague Lisa made individual trifles in parfait glasses for a dinner party and found, as she was serving them, that a spider had gotten into the berries and was frozen halfway down the side of a glass, staring forlornly out through the custard; but that's a good story too).
And this happened:
Kate: "Ally...Ally, can you come and do spider duty?" (Spider Duty is putting spiders outside in the middle of the night because no-one else is man enough to do it.)
Me: "Sure. Is it a big 'un?"
Kate: "Yes."
I wandered into the bathroom with a little drinking glass because Kate is a spider heebie-jeebier and I thought it was probably not that big but actually it was fucking massive - not "I live somewhere like Australia where the spiders are the size of dinner plates and they live in your toilet" large, but "that spider is significantly bigger than I was anticipating" large. Its body was about the size of my eye. I whacked the glass over the spider and some cardboard under the glass and watched in crawl about. It was gross but compelling.
Kate shrieked, "It's a white tail!"
I said, "It's in the glass."
Mum, who had come out of her bedroom to watch the spider sideshow, said, "You'll have to kill it." Kate agreed enthusiastically.
I don't really like killing spiders because I have a firm belief that their children and their children's children and their children's children's children will come back for revenge and crawl into my hair while I sleep (I used to have nightmares about this), and also because I don't really have anything against spiders as long as they are, you know, the outside kind (I know they look evil, but that's not really their fault, like Germans). But I know that white-tails are Bad Spiders and have to be exterminated.
"OK," I said, "someone can squash it."
Much running around trying to find a suitable implement, while I watched the spider and it watched me. Eventually Mum and Kate decided that drowning the spider in the bathroom sink would be the best idea.
I said that this would not be humane. They looked at me like I was nuts.
I would like to say that the story ended with the spider scuttling off into the night, never to be seen again, and Mum and Kate being thwarted in their goal but actually what happened was that they tried to drown the spider and it took ages to die and I got really upset and took the spider out of the water and hit it with a shoe, and that is the story of the time I cried about a spider and everyone thought I was a weiner!
But even though I killed the spider I feel safe that its many descendants will not come back and revenge themselves on me because I gave the spider A Good Death, and that is what is important. To spiders.
EDIT: I read on Wikipedia that white-tails grow to 18mm. Ours was almost an inch in body length. Our spider was a record!
11 comments:
Poor spider! I don't like killing them either, but that's more because I just feel mean, as opposed to having had crazy nightmares about being crawled on or anything. Although...now you've said it...!? *shudder*
Good luck for your job application! :D
I hate spider duty.
Midgets don't ride dogs because they would rather ride ponies. Tiny ponies.
I had to look up white-tail spiders on Wikipedia...if I found that in my bathroom I'd lock the door forever and build a new bathroom elsewhere. I'm not that bad with spiders but that is scary stuff - and it bites people. People. I'm so sheltered, a white-tail would have the biggest spider I've ever seen for breakfast, and then ask for the main course. However, full kudos for killing it humanely.
As for midgets, I thought that's why people bred Shetland ponies, they can't be good for much else.
shetland ponies! or.. those grey hound dogs that look like ponies anyway. I hear they are really fast as well. faster than shetland ponies. Altho im pretty sure that midgets would ride around in those miniature car replica's like the one that tom cruise bought suri cruise. He should be weiner of the week for that. Mostly because im insanely jealous, and i would drive that if i were a midget, and secondly because he is a weiner. he just is.
http://dadness.blogspot.com/2005/12/falabella.html
She looks like she's planning to ride the falabella pony, what with her jodhpurs and all, but surely not? Maybe she is that saddest-of-all-midgets, the Big Midget.
I second the nomination of Tom Cruise for wiener of the week.
Oh girl, you make me larf...hard.
I left a lil' something for you on my blog.
http://tammys-tale.blogspot.com/2010/01/aww-awards.html
Just arrived via Andrea's blog.
I don't kill our eight-legged friends either, if I can help it, since they are benecifial afterall. The catch and release method is best, but I do turn into a bit of a wimp about it sometimes. I would have felt bad for the slow-death-spider too.
The things that really freak me out though are house centipedes. They are FAST.
Holly - I feel mean, too.
ow1 - But tiny ponies are so much more expensive than dogs! Maybe there is some sort of weird midget benefit they all get.
TbR - They're actually kind of not as bad as Wikipedia makes them sound. Except I did not know they were cannibal (spiders).
np, Andrea - Tom Cruise is totally going to be WotW now. Mostly because I don't like his teeth.
Chris - ahahahaha! awesome.
Christine - Hi, thank you for visiting! I have never seen a house centipede and I sincerely hope I never do.
"But tiny ponies are so much more expensive than dogs!"
This is a terrible misconception! Not long ago a friend of mine became obsessed with miniature ponies, and I caught the obsession, and had to spend a lot of time looking at them on TradeMe. And guess what? You can buy a miniature pony for under $1000.
Which does sound like a lot of money but lots of purebred dogs cost even more (mine did, for example, and he only weighs 4kg, and would therefore be useless in terms of midget transport), especially the ones that would be large enough to ride, like wolfhounds or leonbergers.
Also, miniature horses can eat grass, which is free if you have a large backyard whereas a wolfhound probably goes through a miniature ponyweight in meat every month. So in summary, miniature ponies are a preferable mode of midget transport to large dogs.
An Irish Wolf Hound would consume a midget pony each week.
They were used in War & would probably take a pretty dim view of said midge in Jodhpurs trying to get a straddle on... it would be a short chapter in a Beat Takashi flick!
I give all spiders a warning on detection.. "next time your curtains" I say & put them outside... They don't come back & those that do "curtains"
White tails are vicious are not covered by my conventions.. Squish
Tom Cruise is also not covered by my conventions...
Oh & I missed this blog page.
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