The Rat
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
      ( 4:00 AM ) The Rat  
A single glass of champagne imparts a feeling of exhilaration. The nerves are braced, the imagination is agreeably stirred, the wits become more nimble. A bottle produces a contrary effect.
—Churchill

# Posted by The Rat @ 4:00 AM



Tuesday, December 30, 2003
      ( 5:28 PM ) The Rat  
I am a sporting man. I always like to give trains and airplanes a fair chance of getting away.
—Churchill on punctuality

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:28 PM



Tuesday, December 23, 2003
      ( 10:20 AM ) The Rat  
My idea of a good dinner is first to have good food, then discuss good food, and after this good food has been elaborately discussed, to discuss a good topic—with myself as the chief conversationalist.
—Winston Churchill

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:20 AM



Saturday, December 20, 2003
      ( 2:35 PM ) The Rat  
A QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF before you ever do or say anything:

"Will this result in my life or writings being assigned a Libary of Congress call number that begins with 'BS'?"

(This book is BS1430.4 S27X13 1994.)

Also, try not to get yourself hanged, burnt, and your ashes scattered in the Arno.

# Posted by The Rat @ 2:35 PM


      ( 2:30 PM ) The Rat  
AND THEY CALL ME PARANOID. I'm not sure what to make of this or this, either.

However, note that I'm #1 when you search "nasty rat" at overture.com, as somebody out there evidently did.

# Posted by The Rat @ 2:30 PM


      ( 1:26 PM ) The Rat  
Then signor Gasparo said: "There is something else that discloses love more than this."

"And what is that?" asked the Magnifico.

Signor Gasparo continued: "Vain ambition in women, coupled with madness and cruelty. Women, as you yourself have said, seek to have as many lovers as they can and would have all of them burn (were that possible) and, once they were in ashes and dead, would have them alive again so that they might die a second time..."

The Book of the Courtier

# Posted by The Rat @ 1:26 PM



Friday, December 19, 2003
      ( 1:12 PM ) The Rat  
NO COMMENT.

# Posted by The Rat @ 1:12 PM



Thursday, December 18, 2003
      ( 2:12 PM ) The Rat  
THE ONION'S "WHAT DO YOU THINK?" on conservative teens.

# Posted by The Rat @ 2:12 PM



Thursday, December 11, 2003
      ( 11:01 AM ) The Rat  
THERE'S SOMETHING FUNNY in every single sentence of this article. Well, funny if it didn't happen to you.

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:01 AM



Wednesday, December 10, 2003
      ( 11:52 AM ) The Rat  
RECENT SEARCH REQUEST:

"tightly bound bride"

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:52 AM


      ( 11:43 AM ) The Rat  
CHECK OUT this week's horoscopes.

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:43 AM



Tuesday, December 09, 2003
      ( 12:31 PM ) The Rat  
FUN WITH PANGRAMS (scroll down).

# Posted by The Rat @ 12:31 PM



Monday, December 08, 2003
      ( 4:50 PM ) The Rat  
WELCOME! to the Google searcher who came here looking for upsetting poems about weddings.

# Posted by The Rat @ 4:50 PM


      ( 4:49 PM ) The Rat  
The main thing was that a confident instinct within me rebelled against a form of reality that was simply handed to me and was in addition sloppy—rebelled in favor of free play and dreams, self-created and self-sufficient, dependent, that is, only on imagination.
The Confessions of Felix Krull

# Posted by The Rat @ 4:49 PM



Sunday, December 07, 2003
      ( 7:37 AM ) The Rat  
PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING WRONG WITH THE RAT'S LIFE is explained by the fact that the following search requests all brought viewers to her site within the past 72 hours:

man trapped in a woman's body
reindeer porn
position of embryo in rat uterus
duct tape fetish
peer to peer sibyl attack [easily an all-time favorite]
Brothers Karamazov Dupont Circle
pouty lips

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:37 AM


      ( 7:21 AM ) The Rat  
...THEY SHARE A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF HUG.

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:21 AM



Thursday, December 04, 2003
      ( 10:55 PM ) The Rat  
THE RAT HAS JUST NOTICED two exhibitions at the Met that should be of interest to her friends. The first one is on El Greco and you can read about it here. As for the second one...

Bravehearts: Men in Skirts

Throughout the history of Western dress, women have frequently borrowed elements of men's clothing. Examples of men appropriating women's dress, however, are rare. Today, while women enjoy most of the advantages of a man's wardrobe, men enjoy few of the advantages of a woman’s wardrobe. Nowhere is this asymmetry more apparent than in the taboo surrounding men in skirts. Bravehearts locates "men in skirts" in historical and cross-cultural contexts and looks at designers as well as individuals who have appropriated the skirt as a means of injecting novelty into male fashion, transgressing moral and social codes, and redefining ideals of masculinity.

The exhibition is sponsored by Jean Paul Gaultier.

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:55 PM


      ( 10:30 PM ) The Rat  
THE LAST 12 OR SO HOURS ALONE included the following search requests:

breastfeeding Kreutzer Sonata
Currency rat history
strangles sluts

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:30 PM


      ( 10:21 PM ) The Rat  
AS PROMISED, here are the annotations the Rat made while reading Mieke Bal's Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (excludes underlining):

what vs. how (p. 6)
wimp (p. 88)
! (p. 99)
yaah (p. 100)
whoa (p. 100)
! (p. 114)
heh (p. 115)
? (p. 116)
ALL love obj. (p. 117)
eek (p. 117)
lame (p. 121)
yaah (p. 144)
eek (p. 154)
! (p. 166)
?! (p. 168)
! (p. 168)
! (p. 171)
! (p. 177)
! (p. 178)
no kidding (p. 209)
Ackroyd (p. 213)
Dost. (p. 216)
! (p. 217)
heh (p. 219)
! (p. 220)
NO SHIT (p. 221)

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:21 PM



Wednesday, December 03, 2003
      ( 1:36 PM ) The Rat  
CELLINI DESCRIBING HIS INCARCERATION AT THE CASTEL SANT'ANGELO—or an allegory for the Rat's checkered career path since 1993?

Every year the castellan used to be attacked by a disorder that sent him mad; and when it began to come on him he used to talk, or rather babble, without stop. And every year his delusions took a different form: one year he imagined that he was an oil-jar; another year he thought he was a frog, and went jumping about like a frog; another time he was convinced he was dead, and they had to bury him. Every year one or other of these delusions seized him. This time he began to imagine that he was a bat, and so when he was out walking every now and then he would give a high-pitched squeak like a bat and move his arms and body as if he wanted to fly. When they saw what was coming his doctors and his old servants offered him every pleasant distraction they could think of; and as they believed he was very fond of hearing me talk they were always coming in for me to keep him company.

Sometimes the poor man would keep me four or five hours, without my once being allowed to let the conversation flag. I used to eat at his table, sitting opposite him, and he never left off talking about himself and making me talk: but during these conversations I used to eat very well. As for him, poor fellow, he neither ate nor slept; and the result was that he wore me down until I was completely exhausted. [...]

He began to ask me if I had ever had a fancy to fly. I replied that I had tried to do, and done, all those things that men found most difficult and as for flying, I said that the God of nature had endowed me with a body that was unusually agile and capable of running and leaping exceptional distances, and that I would be able to make use of the little skill I had in my hands, and so I certainly had it in me to fly.

Then he started to question me as to how I would do it. I replied that when I considered what animals were able to fly, with the idea of imitating by art what they had from nature, there was none I could possibly imitate except the bat. As soon as the poor man heard me say bat, which tied up with the delusion he had fallen into that year, he started shrieking: 'He's right, he's right! That's it, that's it!'

# Posted by The Rat @ 1:36 PM



Tuesday, December 02, 2003
      ( 8:28 PM ) The Rat  
THE MEMOIR GAME, ctd. All listed in my university library's catalog.

Memoirs of ****
Memoirs of 35-year service in the Chinese maritime customs
The memoirs of a baby
Memoirs of a Babylonian exile
Memoirs of a Balinese prince
The memoirs of a Balkan diplomatist
Memoirs of a banking-house
Memoirs of a banknote
Memoirs of a Bedwellty M.P.
Memoirs of a Belmont boy
Memoirs of a Bengal civilian
Memoirs of a big bunny
Memoirs of a bird in a gilded cage
Memoirs of a birdman
Memoirs of a biscuit baron
Memoirs of a Blue Puttee: the Newfoundland Regiment in the First World War
The memoirs of a boarding kennel
Memoirs of a bolshevik
Memoirs of a book molesting childhood
Memoirs of a booklegger
Memoirs of a Buddhist woman missionary in Hawaii
Memoirs of a Byzantine eunuch
Memoirs of a caddy
The memoirs of a Cambridge chorister
Memoirs of a camp-follower
The Memoirs of a Camp Rabbi
Memoirs of a cat
Memoirs of a certain island adjacent to the kingdom of Utopia
Memoirs of a certain society
Memoirs of a Ceylon planter's travels, 1851 to 1921
Memoirs of a child
Memoirs of a college professor; telling it like it was
Memoirs of a coquet
The memoirs of a counterfeit dollar
Memoirs of a courtesan in nineteenth-century Paris
Memoirs of a cow pony
Memoirs of a coxcomb
Memoirs of a Dada drummer
Memoirs of a defrocked psychoanalyst
Memoirs of a female thief
Memoirs of a fortunate Jew
Memoirs of a geezer : from the timber woods and back
Memoirs of a gothic American
Memoirs of a griffin
Memoirs of a guinea pig
Memoirs of a janissary
Memoirs of a Jewish extremist
Memoirs of a Korean queen
Memoirs of a Krio leader
Memoirs of a late eminent bookseller
Memoirs of a libel lawyer
Memoirs of a Lithuanian bridge
Memoirs of a little monkey
Memoirs of a Malawian
Memoirs of a man
Memoirs of a Mbororo
The memoirs of a mediocre man
Memoirs of a Mendicant Professor
Memoirs of a minor prophet: 70 years of organic chemistry
Memoirs of a minotaur
Memoirs of a Nigerian educator
Memoirs of a nobody
Memoirs of a nullifier
Memoirs of a peon
Memoirs of a pet lamb
Memoirs of a pin
Memoirs of a poor relation being the story of a post-war southern girl and her battle with destiny
Memoirs of a professional cad
Memoirs of a public baby
Memoirs of a saboteur
The memoirs of a salmon
Memoirs of a San Francisco organ builder
Memoirs of a semi-detached Australian
Memoirs of a sheepman
Memoirs of a sleep-walker
Memoirs of a slow learner
Memoirs of a social atom
Memoirs of a social monster
Memoirs of a stomach
Memoirs of a tattooist
Memoirs of a vagrant soul
Memoirs of a velvet urinal
Memoirs of a water drinker
Memoirs of a wild goose
Memoirs of a Yukon priest


# Posted by The Rat @ 8:28 PM


      ( 8:26 PM ) The Rat  
I NEED TO HAVE A SEXY BACK NOW, TOO? A good Onion this week. Also check out "College Freshman Cycles Rapidly Through Identities."

For years, I've worked to keep my weight down and maintain a sexy, flat stomach. I learned to watch my caloric intake to keep a thin, sexy physique. I found out that I had to exercise in order to form sexy, sculpted thighs and sexy, firm buttocks. Then, I read about yoga, which helps women develop long, strong, sexy necks.

I know all about the standard requirements for sexiness just from walking down the drugstore aisle: a thick mane of sexy hair, long, sexy fingernails, and dramatic, sexy eyes. I learned what one needs for a sexy smile—full, pouty lips and electric-white teeth. I found out about the horrors of wrinkles and how they drain the sexiness out of a woman's face.

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:26 PM


      ( 8:20 PM ) The Rat  
STING TO PRESENT UK BAD SEX AWARD.

Now in its 11th year, the dubious honor is awarded by the Literary Review magazine for the most inept description of sexual intercourse in a novel. Nominated authors for this year's prize include John Updike, Paul Theroux, Paulo Coelho and Alan Parker.

Among the climactic passages in the contest is one from former BBC radio executive Rod Liddle's "Too Beautiful for You." "She came with the exhilarating whoops and pant-hoots of a troop of Rhesus monkeys, which was flattering, if alarming."

Motoring themes are to the fore. In Tama Janowitz's "Peyton Amberg" a lover's intimate probing of the heroine is "as if he was searching for lost car keys"...


# Posted by The Rat @ 8:20 PM



Monday, December 01, 2003
      ( 4:00 PM ) The Rat  
SOUNDS LIKE Rumsfeld is almost ready to start writing literary theory.

"Reports that say something hasn't happened are interesting to me, because as we know, there are known unknowns; there are things we know we know," Rumsfeld told the briefing. "We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don’t know."

John Lister, spokesman for the campaign which strives to have public information delivered in clear, straightforward English, said, "We think we know what he means. But we don’t know if we really know."

# Posted by The Rat @ 4:00 PM


      ( 3:53 PM ) The Rat  
THE RAT was Humbert Humbert on the Nabokov Man Quiz. Don't everybody act surprised at once.

# Posted by The Rat @ 3:53 PM


      ( 3:46 PM ) The Rat  
WHAT'S THE BEST KIND OF GERMAN?

A dead German, of course.

# Posted by The Rat @ 3:46 PM


      ( 3:46 PM ) The Rat  
"Men who wear glasses are so much more gentle and sweet and helpless. Haven't you ever noticed it? They get those weak eyes from reading, you know, those long, tiny little columns in the Wall Street Journal."
—Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot

# Posted by The Rat @ 3:46 PM




A page I'm starting to get the overlords at EveTushnet.com to stop $#@! bugging me


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