“No promises – I’ll bring her over, and if she likes it we can tell her it’s hers”. My friend’s adorable little daughter has been on the market for her first pet, and after reading Hissy’s exploits here last week mumsie had an idea. I initially figured she was just being polite, and trying to help me solve my cockroach dilemma. But then I remembered how smart the sprog in question is, and the idea of her actually digging a Madagascar Hisser as her first domestic house pet didn’t seem quite so ridiculous. Couple that with the fact it comes with a nice chain, pin and itself is encrusted in enough jewels to make it look like someone tried to kill it with a Lite Brite – and I felt we may be on to something.

The muchkin loved what she saw, and Hissy now lives with a family here in downtown Boston: Roach relations are still quite good. She has found a lifelong (well, Hissy’s life anyway) friend. She’s a little upset that I am not letting her take him to school, bed, park, etc. But she’ll live. – Mom

Her Dad said I could post this photo, and I think you’ll all agree that with the exception of the enormous insect visible in the terrarium, it’s beyond adorable. I am happy at how things worked out, but I will miss my short-lived little hissing friend. I felt a poem was in order.

Oh dear Hissy,
We’ll miss ye.
But please let’s not fret,
You’re a bug, I’m a man
That’s as close as we’ll get.

Should I miss you,
Want to kiss you.
And my life is a bore.
I’ll go visit the munchkin,
Or just leave trash on my floor… for extended periods of time until 1300 of you move in and force me into a homeless shelter like that movie with the guy named ‘Joe’. A final word from the newly adoptive family:

She is still yelling “MOMMY! Look at HISSY! HE TURNED UPSIDE DOWN!”And we say, “Yes, they do that.” Everybody at work is still thinking how odd it is that her first pet is a cockroach. Now, I am their friend from work who has a daughter whose first pet is a cockroach. Like everybody can have a friggin dog. – Dad

Just to recap, I have had Roach Brooch acting as an affiliate site for Black Chandelier – where they sell the live cockroach brooches you’ve been seeing on TV and reading about. This means, if someone clicks through to their site from mine and buys a roach, I get credit for the sale thanks to a tracking system, and I get 10% of the roach bounty. Obviously, I ran several test orders after I set it all up to make sure that it worked.

The problem is, they sent one of these things to me by mistake. Actually, I’m not entirely sure it was a mistake because the guy emailed me yesterday and said he wanted me to have a mascot. Either way, when I got up Tuesday morning, there was a package waiting for me from Utah and I knew exactly what it had to be – A live Madagascar Hissing Cockroach.

Not wanting the thing to die, I ordered a terrarium online and it arrived yesterday at my office. I brought the Utah parcel into the office, set up the tank, called a few of my coworkers over to observe, and carefully introduced the ginormous beast to its new home. “Hissy” as I named him is currently chilling on my windowsill eating the heck out of a piece of banana from the Park Plaza Au Bon Pain.

I’m not one for bugs, but it’s a pretty cool creature. In addition to it’s size and girth (it doesn’t look much like a traditional roach) it has the accoutrements that warranted it a place on America’s Top Model and bring it’s price tag up to $80 before shipping – it’s encrusted in a pattern of multi-colored jewels, and also comes with a silver chain you can clip on to this belt it has which acts like a leash. You pin it to yourself, and the critter can roam around your shoulders and chest unchecked. Hence, it’s a roach brooch.

I edited a bunch of photos of the adventure last night, which I am going to use on Roach Brooch, so I figured I’d upload them to my own galleries so my readers can see the full drama unfold. I’m still not sure what is to become of Hissy. I am in talks with a friend to give him to her daughter as a pet. Your first thought is – what would a 5 year old girl want with a cockroach? But then you have to remember the jewelry angle – it looks like a demented, post-apocalyptic My Little Pony. So stranger things have happened. Enjoy the photos, and remember – my ownership of Hissy was an accident. I swear I don’t own any wizard hats or 20-sided dice.

It is with a heavy heart that I must announce the untimely demise of Wednesday Wadio. I hope that the hiatus will be a temporary one, but the software I use to play the songs also makes them searchable in a big worldwide network. This wouldn’t be a big deal if people who wanted to listen to songs I’ve featured actually came to the site to do so – but they don’t have to. My bandwidth is simply sucked away to God knows where, the source completely anonymous.

Last month, songs from Wadio Pye were download over 20,000 times by various people around the world. They type “Gorillaz” into the search engine, for example, and 2.5 megabytes of my bandwidth are used to play the song for a 13 year old girl somewhere in Spain. Now that I think about it – that’s kind of hot. But – no – it’s still an enormous strain on my expensive bandwidth.

There’s always another tool to use. If it hsn’t been thought up, it will be soon. I may also resort to just posting MP3s on my server and giving interested parties and friends the password to get access to them. That way, as opposed to the current Radio.Blog system, which converts the MP3s into smaller Flash files, you’ll be able to get proper MP3s of the songs for use on your own iPods. Perhaps that’s the best course of action. I mean, who hasn’t wished they could listen to Liquor and Whores while jogging? I’ll make it happen, you lucky people.