The word on the streets of New York is that there is a new “rat mitigator”; the headlines are screaming “A NEW RAT CZAR”. Her actual title is City Director of Rat Mitigation but it hasn’t taken long for the czar moniker to have grabbed ahold of everyone’s attention.
I know that czar gets added to a lot of titles – Bird Flu Czar, Climate Czar, Energy Czar. My favorite is Elliott Abrams title of Democracy Czar during the GW Bush administration. Czar and democracy seem like odd bed-fellows to me.
I feel a little sorry for the new Rat Czar; it can’t be an easy job and it’s hard to imagine that in a contest between rats and humans, that the rats don’t hold most of the cards. But you never know!
What do YOU think we need a tsar of these days?
Trail Baboon 
We need at least two: Pot Hole Czar and Common Sense Czar. Tough jobs, both of them.
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Lol. I’m trying to imagine the job interview questions for Common Sense Czar!!
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question number one is would you consider being President of the United States and if they answer yes, throw away the rest of the response
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The notion of what is common sense is subjective, I’m afraid, and wouldn’t advance the discourse much. Common sense doesn’t call for substantiation. Everybody thinks their perspective is common sense.
We need a Ratiocination Tsar.
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I’d voted for that, though I’d wager that no one would have a clue as to what a Ratiocination Tsar does.
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Exactly! We could trick them into approving rational thought.
We could suggest that ratiocination is an advanced way to get rid of rats.
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…but the Deep State wants to suppress it.
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We could make baseball caps that say MARA (Make America Ratiocinated Again)
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More like:
MARFO Make America Ratiocinated For Once
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We could use a Noxious Weed Czar but they’d never stand a chance either.
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A Conspiracy Tsar might be useful, but then theories would sprout that his or her appointment was a conspiracy.
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I think we have too many conspiracy tsars already!
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self appointed.
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Of course!!!
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I’m just playing with the alphabet here, but maybe we need a Star Tsar to decide who is and who isn’t a celebrity.
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All the Rat Tsar needs is this troupe of terriers. WARNING: This is rather graphic
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Terrier’s are fierce mousers. Corgis are too. I watched Bootsy uncover a mole, and snap the neck in seconds. We do not have moles in the yard within her reach. The edges of the yard, outside her territory have moles.
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My skin crawls seeing those rats run around. Ishda!
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The ancestors of terriers played a role in keeping some families safe from the Plague in the Dark Ages as the Plague ripped through communities.
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Plague dogs!!
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I’ll counter with the movie ‘Ratatouille’.
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We used to have a rat problem on the farm. Wasn’t as bad as the video, but the day we saw several of them sunning themselves on the roof of the corn crib was the day dad called an exterminator.
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Did the late, great Allie take care of them?
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They hid the rats’ sunscreen.
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Yes, that was the image I had… 🙂
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Those rats were way before Allie’s time.
We did have Zack, an Australian English Shepard and boy, he’d get mice and rats. These days Bailey is the killer, as long as it’s smaller than her. Or she perceives it to be smaller… she won’t engage if she’s not sure. Squirrels, she knows what they are.
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Had forgotten that entire scene; will have to watch again…
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Yikes!
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The scurrying rats are a bit creepy, but, frankly, the thing that terrifies me most about this video is watching how the dogs run underneath the heavy dumpsters – I’m afraid the dumpsters will fall and injure them.
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If the events were closer, we would love to get our terrier involved in barn hunts. No vermin are killed or wounded, but the dogs hunt for rats in small cages hidden in strategic places in barns and sheds.
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Rise and SHine, Baboons,
I believe I mentioned about a month ago that this Spring I am the Hennepin County Master Gardener (HCMG) Pot Czar/Tsar. I am in charge of distributing the plastic pots donated by the Belden Company to MGs propagating house plants for the Houseplant sale in October. So I have people driving up to the house, collecting the pots they have requested. The MG organizing this event sent out a really funny email about this title with notes to law enforcement about the exact nature of this venture.
“Note to Law Enforcement: This message is about distributing plastic pots for houseplants. Despite what you suspect, we are all Master Gardeners in Hennepin County working on a Houseplant Sale.”
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next year the other pot czar i hope
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In the header photo of Czar Nicholas II and his family, the top of the heads of the two women standing behind him have been chopped off from the eyes and up. I was fussing around with my computer to see if I could somehow get a view of the uncut photo. No such luck. It wasn’t until I gave up that I noticed the huge rat on the lap of Nicholas. Is that your handiwork, vs? Pretty funny.
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Yes, my handiwork… and I will admit that I was SO focused on how the rat would end up and moving Nicolas’ hand so it looked like he was petting the rat, I didn’t notice that the photo cropped badly on WordPress. Maybe I can fix it….
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OK, I lied…. will take more time than I have right now. So Alexandra and Maria will just have to make due. They’re not the real stars of today’s show anyway……
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Shoot – I’m going to have to look at the header photos more carefully…
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A Vocabulary Tsar
Woke
Marxist
Socialist
Used frequently in politics without knowledge of the meanings.
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Agreed.
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Anyone else remember this scene in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (Sorry about long url.)
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=ir0tFBIQ&id=67229E4FA47E0E33C2371D0661BAB4E0F1FD7F23&thid=OIP.ir0tFBIQBNe8zLONAUOEpQHaFx&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fihatedblackandwhitemovies.files.wordpress.com%2f2020%2f10%2fwhat-ever-happened-to-baby-jane-1962-2.jpg%3fw%3d768&cdnurl=https%3a%2f%2fth.bing.com%2fth%2fid%2fR.8abd2d14121004d7bcccb38d014384a5%3frik%3dI3%252f98eC0umEGHQ%26pid%3dImgRaw%26r%3d0&exph=598&expw=768&q=whatever+happened+to+baby+jane&simid=608038950051541906&FORM=IRPRST&ck=44037B96DBFF7BD52D53C886C1A35E9F&selectedIndex=7&qpvt=whatever+happened+to+baby+jane&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0
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Oh yes.
It’s remarkable that Bette Davis allowed herself to look so horrible.
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This movie impacted me more than any other horror film. The Joan Crawford character reminded me of a favorite teacher…
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she did often
the queen with the bald head comes to mind
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Elizabeth I.
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For the uninitiated, under the dome is a rat on that plate…
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What’s under the dome for the initiated?
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Snort
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When I was in high school (during my junior year), I was on a team that rented old movies and then we would show them one night a week in the school theater. I don’t remember any of the movies that we did (there were about 15 of them) except for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. During the one scene there were gasps and screams in the audience. So I haven’t clicked on this link because if it’s the scene I think it is, I don’t wanna see it again.
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A Meal Czar – whatever I place in front of you will be considered delicious and nutritious, and make you look forward to the next meal.
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Czar or magician?
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Ooh! Ooh! Pick me ! I’ll be the Meal Tsar!
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I think you already are
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A Truth in Media Czar might be helpful.
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OT: Kevin Kling will be telling stories at St. Olaf on May 9 from 7:30 to 9:00 PM. Tickets are free. I was just going to get a ticket for myself, but then I wondered if anyone else would like to go.
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OT #1: Nature last night was about Niagara Falls. It contained footage of Lake Superior shot by a boy a year older than my son who grew up a quarter mile down the road who grew up to become a wonderful photographer. Chris Dalbec.
OT #2: you get to old age and you expect a certain amount of peace and calm and contentment in your life. My old age is cursed by one misery after another.
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#2 got a new one?
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