Saturday, February 21, 2009

Ceiling critter(s) poison traps: round 2

I'm probably going to wind up regretting this.

The pest control guy was just here to address my ceiling critter(s) issue, which he has identified as rats and squirrels, so apparently there wasn't just one ceiling critter, there has been a full-on rodent house party going on in my attic all this time. He put poison up there again. I had poison in the attic once before, and (as those who have been reading along for a while know), the critter died in the attic, the pest control company wouldn't come get it, and my house smelled like dead critter for a week. I told the guy I was not anxious to have that happen again, and he said it was pretty much the only option: snap traps are dangerous, plus the critter still dies in the ceiling, and sticky traps don't work, so unless I want to put Tyler up in the attic and let him have at it, poison is really the only option.

He swears that my prior experience was an annomally, and usually the animals really do go outside to die. We shall see. I'm thinking the real answer might be to get one of these:



It's an Ashera - a blend of a house cat, some African wildcat, and some Asian wildcat, and it's the size of a dog. Don't get me wrong, Tyler has brought home his share of dead rats and squirrels, but I think the attic infestation might call for something a little bigger and meaner. Actually, with a little genetic engineering, this could maybe be Tyler's alter-ego. You wouldn't like him when he's angry . . .

Anyway, so now I wait. Wait to see if the poison does its job and I no longer hear scratching and scurrying at night, and wait to see if I come home one day to the smell of "damn, something in here is dead." Wish me luck.

- v -

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

You can hit the snooze button, but you're just postponing the inevitable

How hard should it be to purchase an alarm clock?

Ponder that, because it's deeper than it sounds. Take into account all the things that take up time and space in your life: work, family, friends, whatever, and ask yourself how much of that time and space should be devoted to buying a piece of plastic that wakes you up.

I wanted an alarm clock that would wake me to my ipod. I went to Amazon and searched "ipod alarm clock". I got 161 results, which seems a bit excessive. But I didn't have to go through all 161 - I had a price range in mind, so I sorted by price and set about weeding through the options.

About three hours later, I had not decided on a clock, and panic was beginning to set in. I compared features, prices, design, size, and - here's where I really went off the rails - I read the customer reviews. And, if the reviews are to be believed, there are a lot of alarm clocks that are just utter pieces of crap.

I finally bought one - it's a total piece of crap. I'm returning it, and I never return anything. The alarm has one volume: wall-shaking deafening. Truly, I'm sure my neighbors sat bolt upright and said "what the hell was that?" Have you ever seen a cat get really startled? They go from perfectly still to about 4 feet off the ground in less than half a second. That was me at 6:45 a.m. In addition to this, the numbers on the display are bright enough to read by - how on earth can anyone sleep next to something that bright? I can't. I won't.

I ordered a different clock today, so we'll hope for the best on that one, but my point here is two-fold: (1) we are nothing but consumers, and most of what we consume is cheap, poorly made crap that just winds up annoying us, and (2) we are surrounded by such a sea of this crap that it's swallowing us. The consumers have become the consumed.

There shouldn't be 161 ipod clock radios - the crap with obvious, glaring design flaws shouldn't make it to market. The ones that do make it out there shouldn't be so damn expensive (I'm sorry, but it should not cost $100+ to wake up at a certain time each day). And the people who buy these things shouldn't be taking time out of their lives to write long, ranting product reviews and giving the product one or two stars on Amazon.

So now I've spent way too much of my life researching and comparing alarm clocks, buying one, figuring out how to use it, packing it back up to be returned, buying a different one, writing a scathing review of the first one, and writing a rambling blog about the entire experience. Someone save me from myself and the stuff-filled world I've allowed myself to be sucked into. Someone save us all.

- v -