Category Archives: super furry animals

Are Pets Allowed on the Subway?

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 9, 2010 – 6:00 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard, super furry animals
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This morning, the bus came to a halt at the 2nd Avenue stop, the back doors opened, and through them, I spotted a girl with the cutest little French Bulldog at her side. Now, French Bulldogs are my very favorite kind of dog, and this one was blonde instead of the usual black, so I had to will myself not to bolt out the door to coo over it. When all of the other passengers had boarded, she picked up the dog, dropped it in a large tote bag, and got on the bus herself.

Now, I’m all about pets on public transportation. The sensitive part of me likes to ogle cuddly things, and the sadistic part of me likes to see them cower in the corners of their designer carriers whenever we hit a bump. But having a boyfriend who sneezes when he so much sees a picture of a cat has made me sensitive to being in close proximity to fur, so I was a little bit mad at her for having the gall to so flagrantly show off her dog. It was made all the worse when she began taking photos of it with her cellphone.

I checked on the MTA’s website, though, and it turns out that pets are allowed on NYC public transportation “when they are carried in kennels or similar containers that can be accommodated by you on your lap without annoyance to other passengers”. (Harnessed service animals are always permitted, of course.) This girl wasn’t following the rules by having her dog sticking out the top of a tote bag, obviously, but it’s interesting to know that pets are allowed on the subways and buses.

(Click here to see the article on Examiner.com and earn me a pretty penny (literally).)

Ohio Weekend Photodump!

Posted by plumpdumpling on May 25, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, everyone's married but katie, no i really do love ohio, super furry animals
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My second-cousin Keith got an elbow to the stomach from his new bride, Rachael. Their wedding photographer only seemed to be taking super-serious photos, so I felt self-righteous about this one.


But then Keith made the photographer let the groomsmen pose for this picture, and all was right with the world again.


My cousin, Bethany, and my sister, Joanie, were in attendance and looking as stunning/ridiculous as ever.


I attempted to teach my 85-year-old great-uncle to use the laptop I bought him while my best friend, Tracey explained the Internet to my great-aunt:

Tracey: You can use Google to search for anything!
Crazy Aunt Dorothy: Oh, we don’t want that.
Tracey: It’s just a website you go to if you want to look something up.
Crazy Aunt Dorothy: We don’t really need the Internet. Just take us to that Circleville Pumpkin Show website.
Tracey: Uhh . . .


Tracey took me to a movie at the indie theatre in Columbus, the Drexel, and the ceiling fan vent looked like giant-sized art to us. But maybe that’s because it was midnight and we were running on five hours of sleep.


Tracey’s cat is a wild animal. I go home to visit pets as much as people these days because I like her cats so much. Except when I wake up on her couch in the middle of the night to see one of them flying over my head with his claws outstretched as he jumps from armrest to armrest.

I also went to an 80s dance party, ate the Splenda cheesecake at Cheesecake Factory for the first time, visited my friend Katie and was forced to hold her six-day-old baby (Evelyn) but did not drop her, went to visit my cousin Ethan and his six-day-old baby (Kaydence) and used my newfound not-dropping-baby skills to also hold her, celebrated my sister’s birthday with our parents and her husband, and explained to my parents that the smoke monster in “Lost” makes the same sound that a taxicab’s meter does.

I really, really love going home.

New York City is Supposed to be Devoid of Nature, and That’s Why I Moved Here

Posted by plumpdumpling on May 21, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under living in new york is neat, stuff i hate, super furry animals
Tagged as , , ,

I spent my entire morning commute yesterday thinking that something was crawling on me. Now, my morning commute is only five stops on the train, but rush hour trains are always held up at the stations by passengers trying to cram themselves in, so five stops can take a half an hour. So picture me feeling itchy all over for a half an hour, adjusting the tags on my shirt and jacket in case that was the problem, furiously scratching the places I felt it most.

At first I thought it might be my imagination, because I do drop acid before going to work every morning, after all. But at one point, I actually felt like something was crawling on my ear. And I felt like the guy across from me on the train was watching it happen. I tried to distract myself with my Kindle, but I kept having to reach up every two minutes to brush existent or non-existent things off of my face. I wanted to get out a mirror and have a look, but I thought it was better to not know for sure, considering what my reaction might be.

I had it in my mind that it might be a spider, and I am totally scared of spiders. Like, scared in the way that if someone put a fake one in my lunch or on my pillow, I would never talk to that person again. Growing up on a farm, I was running downstairs nightly to wake my dad up and make him kill one I had or had maybe spotted on the wall beside my bed. Even now when I go to Ohio to visit, I’m on a constant look-out for spiders all over the house, and last time I was home and made my sister kill one for me that was dropping from the ceiling, she asked me, “How did you manage to survive twenty-some years in the country?” In that same trip, I made my best friend, Tracey, reach across me while we were in the Taco Bell drive-thru to pluck one of those little hairy spiders off of the armrest attached to my door. I really think I’m more equipped to deal with cockroaches somehow.

Anyway, I finally got to work and ran to the bathroom to check out my face. I didn’t see anything, so I officially chalked it up to my wild imagination and did my business. As I was washing my hands, though, this cute little spider came down on his web right in front of my face FROM MY HAIR. It was then that I remembered walking underneath a tree and noticing a spider hanging from it at the very last moment that morning, but never did I consider that it might have jumped on me. I tried to scream, but only air came out, and even though the last thing I want to do in the world is purposely touch a spider, I reached up and smacked it away.

And then I frantically checked the floor for it, but it was nowhere to be seen. And then I spent the rest of the day itching myself and being completely miserable.

Keep a Little Memory of Your Pet with You All of the Time . . . by Beheading It and Stringing It on a Necklace

Posted by plumpdumpling on December 2, 2009 – 11:45 am
Filed under politicking, super furry animals
Tagged as ,

My best friend, Tracey, sent me a link this morning to a Craftzine blog post showcasing a necklace made from a dead bird’s head. My immediate reaction was along the lines of, “Cool! I’d buy that and love it and wear it every day if it wasn’t $350.”

When I read all of the comments on the post, though, I noticed that 90% of them were along the lines of, “Gross! This is barbaric and despicable, and you should warn us before you post things like this.” And any comments that were positive received replies along the lines of, “Shut up.”

What’s the big deal? The bird died of natural causes and is being celebrated as art. It wasn’t harmed to make the jewelry, and I imagine that if animals could express their preferences for their remains, they’d choose to be displayed proudly on necks rather than be stuffed in shoeboxes and tossed in holes in the ground. Of course, I could be a little biased, because I think the giant stuffed moose head on my neighbor’s wall in Ohio is rad.

When I suggested that I might like to cut off my dead mother’s ring finger and have it taxidermied to display in my home, wedding ring and all, Tracey agreed that it wouldn’t be offensive. My friend Tim tells me that in Papua New Guinea, mourners wear necklaces of their loved ones’ digits to honor their memories. My friend Anthony thinks people have may desecration of the dead issues with that in the U.S., but Tracey came up with the solution of donor cards that allow you to choose whether or not to permit your family to use your parts postmortem. Wouldn’t you love to see stuffed hands and feet on mantles like any other tchotchke right next to your Christmas stocking?

My friend Nik imagines that most of the people who threw hissy fits at the dead bird head are the same ones wearing leather shoes as they type, and I agree. It’s another example of the way people generally have no problem squashing a cockroach but freak out when anyone harms a cuddly bunny. Of course, I totally understand why someone would protest the squirrel feet earrings, but that’s only because they’re ugly.

And Tracey, you’re getting a cat hair handbag for your birthday. The $400 kind, because I care.

Nostalgia About the Early Days of the Internet

Posted by plumpdumpling on April 10, 2009 – 2:07 pm
Filed under i used to be so cool, super furry animals
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Remember how much more important the Internet seemed in its youth? How we didn’t rely on it for everything and didn’t entirely take it for granted?

I don’t remember how I knew what it was exactly, but I do remember the first time I ever used it. My best friend Tracey and I were going to a Men’s Glee Club concert at THE Ohio State University one day in our early years of high school, and we stopped by her older brother’s campus apartment beforehand to waste time and use his computer, which included what must have been the slowest modem ever made.

As I remember, it turned out that we’d left our tickets to the concert in her parents’ car, so we spent the entire afternoon looking up song lyrics and pictures of our favourite bands of the time: silverchair, Megadeth, Bush, and Nirvana. Recently, we had spent an entire Friday night at her house watching, pausing, watching, and pausing Bush’s performance of “Insect Kin” on “Saturday Night Live” that my mom had taped for us so we could figure out all of the lyrics. Which took hours. So yeah, the Internet and all of its tricks seemed AMAZING to us at the time.

I bring this up because my co-worker Nik was hovering over my desk this morning, swinging the laces on the hood of his hoodie back and forth over my monitor like windshield wipers, and somehow, it reminded me of the eSheep I had back in high school.

This little Sheepy would hang out above the taskbar at the bottom of your screen, walking, running, sleeping, and occasionally getting bug-eyed and dying. You could pick him up with your pointer and drop him, causing him to bounce, but that’s literally all he did. AND I THOUGHT IT WAS AWESOME.

Still do, to be honest. And thankfully, there’s a 4-minute+ video on YouTube to help me relive its glory.

So tell me: what did you love about Web 1.0?