Unsolicited Advice

Happy Year of the Rat, everybody! Barak and Durnik have already celebrated by going to the vet.

See, we had company over the holidays. Guest Rat Relg needed meds while his mommy was out of town, so while her boyfriend could handle food, water, and the occasional bedding change for the other three miscreants in their mischief, I had Relg in a travel cage on the floor of my room for two weeks.

Relg was not especially happy with this arrangement, unfortunately. I was not Mommy, he was not home, and he definitely did not want his medication twice a day. Barak and Durnik were also not especially happy with this arrangement, as neither of them have any constructive way to cope with the existence of other rats. Even each other. I have to have one of them out for runarounds in the morning and one in the evening, because when I plop them on the bed one right after the other, chaos ensues. If Durnik goes first, Barak wombles around the blankets huffing for a fight, and if Barak goes first Durni…

Now that we've got all the good stuff out of the way, behold what is widely held to be the worst holiday special ever produced.

If you want some warning, here's a brief explanation of what in God's name is wrong with this thing. If you're brave and/or masochistic... well, here you go:

Clement Clarke Moore's famous poem, "A Visit From St. Nicholas", aka "'Twas the Night Before Christmas", as read by Vincent Price.

From From The Heart of Israel: Jewish Tales And Types, collected by Bernard Drachman. James Pott & Co., New York, 1905.

At the time this book was published, "Israel" was more a concept than an official place; the independent state of Israel wasn't established until after WWII, in 1948. Most collections of "Jewish folklore" are comparatively modern stories from the Jewish populations of Europe. (I'm pretty sure the 'province of Posen' referenced here is present day Poznań, which sets this story in then-Prussia, now-Poland.) I tried finding something older, but there's almost nothing out there from the Middle East between the Bible and the printing press in age. I would be very surprised if there weren't Jewish variations of the tales of Nasruddin, a figure in Arabic-language lore that spreads from North Africa all the way into Turkey, who is alternately portrayed as a very wise man and a complete wiseguy. A lot of the same clever "wel…