You Thought You Had A Shitty Job

According to Mental Floss, in the Victorian Era, ratteners would capture and sell rats to pubs where they were eaten by dogs and played with for entertainment.
Rats, I can’t believe I missed that “premium” entertainment!

The job disappeared when the internet made porn more universally available.  The word shrank down to ratter, and that task was taken by farm-cats, and digger-dogs like my two Scottish Terriers.

People in Medieval times were often given surnames based on their occupation.  The job, and the name, goes back far beyond the Victorian Era.  In both English and German, the spelling first became Rattner, then diminished to Ratner, like Brett Ratner, a Hollywood director, recently mired in a #MeToo and Time’s Up scandal.

Eventually some versions reduced to Radner, and to Radnor.  There is a Radnorshire in Wales.  This time the egg came before the chicken.  It was founded by a couple of English families who moved there to escape their cruel town and despicable occupation, to become farmers.

At the steel warehouse where I worked – long ago – the floor in the fabrication section was poured concrete, but in the actual metal storage area, it was flattened dirt, covered by pea gravel.  On one side, bundles of steel sheets formed stacks eight and nine feet high.

Rats got in, and would burrow under these stacks, occasionally causing one to collapse and tip over into its neighbor.  Righting one of these piles was a slow, somewhat dangerous task, often with product loss.

Nearby was a worker, a recent immigrant from Germany.  His job was to take bundles of 20 foot steel angles or flat bars, and use a large, gravity-fed, horizontal band-saw to cut them to smaller lengths, for fabrication.  Since the bundles might be fifty to a hundred pieces, each actual cut time could be ten to fifteen minutes.

During these un-busy periods, the company urged him to go through the storage area, spreading rat poison, and baiting and checking 15 or 20 big wooden rat traps.  He once proudly told me that he was the company ‘Rattenfanger,’ another German word for rat catcher.

After having to do this task twice, as a home project, https://archonsden.wordpress.com/2017/04/26/oh-rats/ .  I wouldn’t want to have to do it again.  I prefer capturing accolades.  Why don’t you stop by again in a couple of days, and bring some with you.  Remember, I prefer the butterscotch flavored ones.  😉

Being A Baby About One-Liners

People ask me what I’d like for my 76^th birthday….
….I tell them, a paternity suit.

I’ve got rid of all my winter fat….
….Now I have spring rolls.

A bike in town keeps running me over….
….It’s a vicious cycle.

Is a cow that won’t give milk a milk dud….
….or an udder failure?

I’m so good at sleeping….
….I can do it with my eyes closed

I took a video of my shoe yesterday….
….It has some great footage.

Today at the bank, an old woman asked me to check her balance….
….so I pushed her over.

Average things are manufactured….
….in the satisfactory.

My wife says I’m absolutely useless at fixing appliances….
….Well, she’s in for a shock

I have a black belt in origami….
….I made it myself

How many lawyers does it take to fill an ambulance?….
….I don’t know. No-one’s ever tried to save one.

We don’t have an alarm system….
….I was just standing on the cat

A horse walks into a bar….
….The bartender says, ”Hey.”….
….The horse replies, “Sure.”

A hermit is….
….a man who goes off by himself

To improve my sex life I took Viagra and a bit of cannabis….
….I just ended up with stiff joints.

I can eat sugar with either hand….
….I’m ambi-dextrose.

Two guys walk into a bar….
….The third one ducked

Would you like to hear a construction joke?….
….Well, I’m still working on it.

Wanna hear a roof joke?….
….Okay, the first one’s on the house.

A Freudian slip is when you say one thing….
….but mean your Mother

Ghosts like to ride in elevators….
….because it raises their spirits

I just spent $10,000 on home improvements….
….Now my home wants to leave me.

I’ve been watching women’s beach volleyball, and there was a wrist injury….
….but I should be okay by tomorrow

If you have a lot of math nerds in your family….
….you have square roots

What do electricians discuss?….
….Current events

 

A To Z Challenge – T

This will be a DIY, or interactive post, for the letter

Back last April, when I decided to try this challenge, I also decided to cheat (a bit). Each day, I would scan a variety of other posts, to see what words their writers had chosen, to pick one that sparked some inspiration.  Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn’t.  This is a ‘didn’t work’ letter.  I wrote down;

Tough
Tarts
Too much
Think
Treasure
Tease
Trash
Train – (noun or verb)
Torrid – or is that….
Torpid – I can’t read my own writing

I would like to make this an audience-participation, contest-y sort of post. I invite all of my readers to choose one of the above words, or provide any other T-word.  Leave a comment, giving your word, and hopefully some kind of prompt.

We can’t rely on ‘First Through The Door” kind of thing, so I will choose one at random, and use your word and prompt to attempt to compose a short post about it.

So, what do we have for our embarrassed loser lucky winner, Johnny?

Well Bob, first they will receive my undying thanks for pulling me out of a compositional blue funk. They’ll also experience the incomparable joy of seeing their name up in lights on my blog.  I’ll even try to link to their site, so that others can know what they’ve done.

C’mon folks, everyone is welcome to submit an idea. The more, the merrier – I am.  You can’t win unless you enter.  If you don’t, you’ll just get some more;

I’ve claimed that I’m tough. I’m probably not.  It’s more like overcooked, dry, and stringy.  I just finished two of my once-a-year mincemeat tarts.  I should have only eaten one, because I’ve already had too much tryptophan from too much turkey, since I’m writing this at Christmas.

I like to think that I can compose the occasional little linguistic treasure, but it’s just a tease. Too often, it’s only another example of taking out the mental trash, which I use to help me train to write better. ‘Torrid’ must have been a typo, because I’ve never had ‘that much’ passion about anything in my life.  With my rotund tummy stuffed full of Christmas goodies, I’ll just become torpid, and hibernate until New Years comes along.

Your suggestions are welcome, because my inspiration is….also hibernating.   😛

Big Boy’s Little Toys

After giving the best part of his life (In both senses.) to the American Army – suffering the slings and arrows, as well as the mosquitoes, camel shit and anal-retentive superiors whose assholes are so tight that, when they fart, only dogs can hear them, BrainRants® has discovered that the government bureaucracy values him as much and has the same level of loyalty as found in private industry.

A short time ago he received the highly prized little pink slip reading, “We are sorry, but your continued presence at this time is surplus to our ongoing requirements.”

In the beginning, he got to drive a tank, and blow shit up, but later found that he was required to throw his body in front of rampaging power-point presentations, injuring his shoulders, and pride.

The Government, in its soul-grinding way, is requiring him to locate and return every piece of crap they’ve issued him over almost a quarter of a century.  Unless he’s a lot slyer than even I think he is, there is probably not an Abrams tank in his garage, next to the beer fridge.

I don’t feel it’s fair that he has to leave the five-sided game-show without at least a consolation prize.  If any of you kind and computer-literate people want to start a GoFundMe or CrowdSourcing campaign, I will be happy to donate….a couple of ideas.  I might also get around to returning a few beer bottles for refund.

My first thought was that we could get him one of these Radio Controlled Abrams tanks.  He could sit out on his rebuilt back deck, with a Coors Lite in one hand, and the control in the other, raising Hell with the neighborhood squirrels, and any cats and/or dogs running at large.

Another idea would be to get him one of these darling ride-on Abrams.  They’re $10 cheaper than the RC, but I’m afraid our boy is a bit bigger than the cute kid in the photo.  We might have to purchase a matched pair, so that he could wear one on each foot, like roller-skates, to zip him to work on future commutes.

A local businessman runs a surplus store.  He’s also into militaria.  I don’t know how much profit there is in carpenters’ pencils, CD jewel cases or field mess kits, but there’s enough to buy him a plane.  When I heard that he liked to get high….

He also bought, and parked in the front corner of his lot, a deceased tank.  If we dug deep enough in our pockets and pocketbooks, we might raise enough cash to convince him to let it go to a good home.  If Rants doesn’t have a covert Abrams in his garage, this might be the ideal DIY rebuilding project.  We could FedEx it to him, a few parts at a time.

Remember, even if he eventually gets it up and running, and in operational condition, this is a Canadian tank.  It’s only dangerous to SmartCars   😆

What do you say, people??  Let’s show him that we still love and respect him, even if he has mutated into a civilian!

Flash Fiction #44

© Lauren Moscato

Watch That First Step

“Dey say dissa new, Pope Frank”…..

“Pope Francis!  Avva sum respeck, eh!?”

“Dey say heeza nice guy, a manna da peepul. Dey say he goze owt onna street at night, anna help da homeless.”

“Uh huh!”

“He doan like da fancy cloze, an he doan stay at da Vatican.  He live in some ratty hotel.  Heeze ‘sposed ta wave at alla da peepul from da balcony at St. Peter Basilica.  What he gonna do when dey all show up outside hiz hotel window?”

“Doan wurry about dat.  I got sum material an toolz, an datz all bin tooken care of.

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

 

 

Flash Fiction #9

S.P.C.A.?

 

 

 

 

 

I told the kids I didn’t want them to get a hamster, but they just thought I was being grumpy old dad, again.

“We’ll feed it, and water it, and make sure it stays in its cage, ALL the time.”  Yeah, right!

So, here I am, with half this wall ripped down, and still no hamster.  We can hear it, but we still can’t see it.  If it dies in there, I don’t know which will be worse, the stench, or the kids’ wails.

I’ll need to use their college fund to hire a drywaller.  Shoulda got them a turtle!

 

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site.  Use the weekly Wednesday photo as a prompt, and write a complete 100 word story.

And a shout-out to my chiropractor, who now reads my drivel, and without whom, I could not sit comfortably and compose it – straighten the kid out today!