I stopped at Best Buy on my way home from work the other day to get an idea of how much a FireWire video input card for my computer would cost. After jotting down the name of what seemed to be a great digital video editing package so that I could check out some online reviews at my leisure, I was about to head out of the store when my eye was caught by an eye-catching SALE tag: Cool, a paper shredder for just twenty bucks!

Now you're probably thinking: "What's this got to do with the domesticated Rattus norvegicus"?

thats exactly what i would be thinikng, except taht i already know the answer. but i wont tell!

Well, like other pet rodents, rats need a generous layer of absorbent material in the bottom of their cages to soak up the moisture after the animals answer the call of nature. Incidentally, I've read that lady rats, being ladies, prefer to choose one corner of their cage as a designated WC, but gentlemen rats are less fastidious. Rugby pretty much "goes" all over his cage, except in his wooden nest-box.

duh. that's my BED, of course i'm not going to drop the kids off at the pool there, if you know what i mean

"Drop the kids--"? Where did you hear that expression?

at summer camp

What summer camp? There's no such thing as summer camp for rats, and anyway, you weren't even born last summer.

i heard it on HBO

But I don't even have cab... Never mind. Anyway, pet stores sell various types of litter material for rodents and other small mammals: pine or cedar shavings, pellets of compressed recycled paper, ground corncobs, etc. They're all about $4 or $5 a bag, at least, so it dawned on me that the paper shredder would pay for itself in just a few months. I started out with a brown paper grocery bag (which I tore into several pieces to avoid jamming the shredder), moved on to some junk mail and a two-week-old copy of the Washington Blade, and finished with a yellowing paperback called What Is Dungeons and Dragons? (That last item was unearthed from a box of books that had been sitting in my parents' basement since I was in high school.)

i give the paper shredder a gold star for excellence. the curly strips are fun to dig through and plus i have something to read while i'm pinching a loaf.

hi am rugby and i am a rat. the new place we are living in is vast and cavernous. i can run and run and run and run on the floor before i come to a wall.

this extreme flooriness is a bug, not a feature, because i prefer to be near walls. if you put me in the middle of a room i will make a beeline for the nearest wall and then stick to it. you may ask ''why rugby oh why do you run along the wall???'' well the answer is that i have an even bigger mustache than all the guys from the Village People put together.

my whiskers stick out past my shoulders and i use them as feelers. when i feel a wall brushing against my mustache, i know for sure that i am running in a straight line, and this way i can't get lost.

sometimes uncle bob sits down on the living room floor indian style and puts me in his lap. i will crawl around and over and under his feet and legs and butt and up his shirt and across his shoulder and back down. then around and over and under and up and across and down again. should i leave the uncle bob oasis and venture across the vast uncharted Rug Desert in search of a nice safe wall? no, i think i will stay and crawl around and over and under and up...

At this point, I like to stretch out one leg in the direction of the nearest piece of furniture, thus providing Rugby a safe route wallward.

...and down and -- hey, this wasn't here before. it looks like a wall but smells like uncle bob. i wonder where it goes...

Rugby and I are all moved in at the Alexandria apartment now. It's really swank, by the debased standards of Uncle Bob, who just a year ago was sleeping on a bedroll in a room the size of your typical suburban walk-in closet. Now we enjoy every luxury that money can buy, from wall-to-wall carpeting to an ultra-modrin washer/dryer combo right in the apartment. Yes, you heard that right -- I can do my laundry without leaving home! No more precious calories wasted on schleps to the laundromat! And I've got a machine to wash my dishes, so sayonara to those backbreaking minutes of manual labor at the kitchen sink, night after night.

now you are thinking like a rat!

by the way i like my new digs. i have a good view of the living room and kitchen from my house. the carpet is fluffy and comfortable on my feet when i do laps around baseboards.

hello i am rugby. i am a rat. did you know there are many books about rats? YES it's true! for example:

"the coming of the rats" is a very very very interestng book about a lady who cannot get a date because it is after the h-bomb and she is a rubber-armed mutant. they call her Pretzelina because of her bendiness.

one day the handsome prince of the country announces that there will be a mangificent ball in the palace and he will choose a bride! Pretzelina wnats to go to the ball but she has no dress to wear on account of the fact that no one will give a job to a rubber-armed mutant.

So Pretzelina is very sad, but then she makes friends with some brave and helpful RATS. the rats make a dress for her out of used Kleenex and put it on her as you can see in this picture and then Pretzelina goes to the ball!!!

does Pretzelina get to marry the handsome prince? does she use her stretchy rubber arm powers to rescue her rat friends from a terrifying MONSTER? maybe!!! but i will not give the ending away. you will have to buy the book and read it yourself.

okay that is the endof the BOOK REVIWE. plz go away now!