Best Headline of the Week

"Jesus in a Green Beret. Europe has lost its mind." Hey monkeys are people too, stop being a hater! And, what about revoking personhood rights to people who are clearly somewhere outside of all species?

I Am As Industrious As A Sloth

Actually, I'm more industrious than a sloth.

P.U.: I Know, You Want My Life

I smelled it. I just couldn't find it.

Yeah, I know. Nice. So, I look downstairs, room by room. Nothing. The dogs are potty trained, but they are finicky. They don't like rain. And for the last 24 hours non-stop it's been raining. And so they've been limping around the house with legs crossed. I pushed them out the door once or twice and they just looked at me, forlorn, from the porch which just pissed me off. I knew they had to go, and bad, and they refused.

But I couldn't blame them out of hand for the smell, because I have a kid who has decided that "I WANT TO GO POTTY!" Well, we're at the stage where he announces the desire to go to the bathroom and what do you know, he already has. I'm guessing he'll turn around the order by the time he goes to college. After the first couple kids, I just stopped obsessing.

However, he does have episodes. He doesn't like poopy diapers anymore and if he can't find me or just generally gets impatient, surprise! So, was the offending smell a product of the toddler? The thought sent an electric jolt through my limbs. I got a little crazy. This is where hidden cameras would be so embarrassing. Check that. They'd be embarrassing all the time. Quite freaked out, I ran through the house screaming for the kid. Found him. Clothed and clean. Phew. But still P.U.

Screw it.

I had stuff to do and had to leave the house and the nasty stench. But I also had to come back home. It hit me like a frigging shit wall. Gah! I looked around again, but was too damn lazy to make the long walk up the stairs. Eventually, I'd have to go up there. In a fit of denial, I actually thought that the smell was the trash. I took it out. I turned on fans. And I thought to myself, It smells better. That must be it.

Have I mentioned how much I hate bodily excretions? It is a sign of my motherly love that the kids ever get clean pants. Puking, pooping, peeing. Oh my! But that is nothing when compared to my dog excretion aversion. Just do your business outside like every other civilized being, but no, they search for and find hidden corners and leave deposits. And this is when I start hating animal rights people. Animals are so not people. Animals do not deserve special treatment.

Eventually, I found them. Two dogs. Two piles. One big. One small.

You know, the other day, when the angry men from other blogs stopped by, one guy asked what the point of having kids was. Are you freaking kidding me? I'll answer your question with a a question: What is redeeming about owning an animal? You feed, water, house the beasts and then they shit in your house? They don't get a job. They don't do the laundry. They don't take out the trash. Hell, they grab the trash, shred it and spread it around. Insurance doesn't cover them. They eat chocolate, make themselves sick and then you spend thousands trying to fix them. It costs more to get the dog's fucking hair cut (which also happened today) than it does to get mine cut. That just. Ain't. Right.

So, on this boiling backdrop, I find the shit and I want to murder them with my bare hands. Caninicide. The only thing that stopped me is that Wachel Lukis would report me to the animal C.O.P.S. They actually have that show here in Houston. So the dogs live. They sleep at my feet right now, but the love hasn't returned. Oh no. It will, eventually. Maybe tomorrow, the little one will hump the big one's face (don't tell mys sister) and that'll make me laugh. Redemption. Conditional redemption. I'm a fickle god.

Dog shit. Kid shit. A stanky house. It's all glam glam and bon bons here alright. I'm living the glamorous life. I just thought you should know. You're jealous. Admit it.

Zoo Pictures

What the heck! Thought I'd share a good Zoo day with you folks. Oh and one cool Astros picture for good measure.

Babies with their mamas and bodily functions seem to hold everyone's interest. The elephant is 18 months old and was stomping through the food and trying to get out of the fence to the people. They seem so social.



Even a fearsome beast like a Bengal tiger seems less imposing when in disposed.

The bear responding to our cooing and baby talk, just like a dog. His ears perked up. He turned and watched us as we left and seemed genuinely sad to see us go.

I know, I'm anthropomorphizing, but isn't that what everyone does at the Zoo?

For the record, the Astros won.

Evil Bunnies and Other Vile Creatures Destroying Your Garden

A friend of my friend Lorne wrote an email describing his woes in the garden. Lorne, who wrote here last week, gardens and keeps chickens. He views himself as a renaissance man in the vein of Thomas Jefferson. He's a dabbler. Lawyer, writer, gardener, hen-house owner, etc. His daily difficulties give me great mirth as I picture him sloshing through the mud and snow (it's Michigan post-winter, pre-spring) defending the worthless birds from the neighbor's dog and most of the times, themselves. Lorne's friend, lawyer Michael Edmunds share's his own difficulties with mother nature. I hope you laugh as much as I did.

***************

More importantly, I hate rabbits. I don't believe god actually created them. I'm convinced they are Satan's evil minions, born of the dark, and designed to make life so miserable that we give up our souls in exchange for relief from their torment.

They have destroyed both my apple trees, reaching further than I had imagined possible. They stripped every limb up to about 4 feet above the ground. At first I thought I had Barry Bonds' pet rabbit in my yard, and I became afraid that if I tried to keep him out, he would fly into a roid rage and attack me. But Ben told me they can reach a lot higher in the winter bec of the snow. I have to do something, but not sure what.

I am becoming resigned to an ugly fence. I don't have the time or money for a nice one, and I'm not convinced there is such a thing anyway. On the other hand, I can't go another year without fencing or I will lose my 4 year old investment in time and money in grapes, blueberries, and apples. The little bastards have even been chewing on the lattice I put up last year, which was all nice and freshly stained, but now has big bite marks all over it. That was just mean. They didn't even eat it--just chewed it up.

Everyone knows that squirrels are right behind rabbits on the hierarchy of demonic beings. Like socks, they can apparently reproduce a-sexually. Furthermore, unless you cut off their heads, they can't be killed . Sometimes I hear this haunting voice at night, which says "there can be only one!"

I have shot them so many times with my pellet gun (which has a muzzle velocity greater than most .22s) that I would have expected them to be dead from lead poisoning by now, not to mention the gaping round hole through their furry little hides. Yet after falling many feet from the top of pine trees, telephone pole, and power lines, they inevitably jump up, scamper away. Then they reappear a couple of days later, even stronger than before, with no apparent effect except for the foresight to run away long before I can get within pellet gun range.

They raid my bird feeder daily, to the detriment of "wanted" guests like cardinals. I left a baited trap, which they tripped, but it can't hold them. Like Houdini, the cage can't hold them for longer than a few minutes. They make a horrible racket, tear up the ground under the cage, attack the cage with fierce determination and brute strength, and get away every time. Unlike Houdini, they also piss all over the place every time they get caught. Instead of a trapped squirrel, I end up with a bare spot of dirt or mud where the grass used to be, a bent cage, a stench of urine that seems to linger for days, but no squirrel.

I enclosed the feeder in metal, but they reinforced their teeth with addamantium, and promptly chewed through the metal. I moved the feeder from the tree, where they would hang upside down from pine needles, like Bulgarian acrobats. I bought a metal pole and anchored it in the ground, with the bird feeder on top. Defying gravity and other principles of physics including surface tension and friction, they climb straight up, not even slipping, where they sit and feast on my bird seed in plain sight of the kitchen table, to the delight of all but me. I greased the pole with Vaseline, enduring the shocked looks of the clerks at Walmart, who had never met someone who needed such a large vat of Vaseline for any purpose not associated with self gratification. They then proved that the evolutionary link between their winged, South American cousins, leaping from my deck to the top of the feeder without touching the pole. I didn't even get the satisfaction of watching one try to climb the newly slathered pole.

I have decided to escalate the conflict, at the risk of achieving a Pyrrhic victory. For example, If I place a rat trap in the bird feeder, do I merely endanger the birds, or will the squirrels chew through my hose (again) and try to flood my basement? I might run leads from my circuit breaker to the metal pole that supports the feeder, and spread peanut butter on the feeder, but how many of my children will remain to help me celebrate when the first squirrel finally begins sending smoke signals to the others about the dangers of screwing with me? I considered lacing the bird feed with ball bearings, and buying a huge electromagnet from ACME, but it never seemed to work for Wile E. Coyote, so I became discouraged.

I only have one idea left, so I have to make it count: guerilla warfare. I plan to dig a deep hole all around the pole from which the bird feeder is hanging, and bury punjii sticks which have been dipped in feces. Then I will cover the hole with small sticks and spread mulch over the sticks to disguise the hole. If necessary, I will also spread walnuts all over the mulch. I'm sure it can't fail.

Good luck. call when spring stops playing jokes on us and is actually here, so we can commiserate about our yards.

Woo Dog!

And I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about this.

Interesting....

It's raining right now and the sun is shining full blast. Weird. Global warming must be caused by humans. How else would this be possible?

More incongruous thoughts:

Mother Theresa didn't believe in God?

The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, "neither in her heart or in the eucharist."

Isn't she a Saint? And didn't Christopher Hitchens play Devil's Advocate against her sainthood?

Jonah Goldberg discusses the love of dogs and what it means to be human regarding Michael Vick's conviction. He's changed my mind. This is what he said:

Indeed, as many have noted, dogs look to us as we look to God. Even Ambrose Bierce, a great cynic, defined “reverence” as “the spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man.

Finally, Brendan Loy notes, "All's Quiet on the Atlantic Front".

It’s still not a “slow season” yet, but if this keeps up for the next couple weeks, it will be.

Let's hope the scientists are wrong. Again. For many different satisfying reasons.

Michael Vick: Barking Mad

ESPN reports tonight that Michael Vick might take a plea deal which would land him in jail for around a year.

A YEAR?!!

For dogs fighting? What the hell? There are murderers who get less time. Give me a friggin' break. They are dogs. No, it's not nice, but lots of things in this world are not nice, and in the Not Nice hierarchy why is the government busying itself over fighting dogs? As a taxpayer, I find the whole thing ridiculous.

Queen Elizabeth enjoyed bear and bull baiting for heaven's sake:

Bull baiting was a contest in which the bear was chained to a stake by one hind leg or by the neck and worried by dogs. The whipping of a blinded bear was another variation of bear-baiting. Queen Elizabeth attended a famous baiting which was described by an Elizabethan chronicler called Robert Laneham as follows:

"... it was a sport very pleasant to see, to see the bear, with his pink eyes, tearing after his enemies approach; the nimbleness and wait of the dog to take his advantage and the force and experience of the bear again to avoid his assaults: if he were bitten in one place how he would pinch in another to get free; that if he were taken once, then by what shift with biting, with clawing, with roaring, with tossing and tumbling he would work and wind himself from them; and when he was loose to shake his ears twice or thrice with the blood and the slaver hanging about his physiognomy."

Oh, and cock fighting was fun, too:

Cock fighting was another popular Elizabethan blood sport. Roosters were fitted with sharp blades on each foot and put into a cock pit to fight to the death. Fighting cocks were expensive, so it took a wealthy man to own these birds, but Elizabethans from both the Upper and Lower Classes came to see and bet on these cock fights.

But here we are in the ever-so-civilized United States marshaling all the force of the Patriot Act to jail these modern barbarians.

You know what I find barbaric? The government misusing it's excessive and considerable power to persecute frivolous misdeeds when rape, murder, and heinous crimes get ignored.

And for all the animal lovers (and I am one) who say this:

Perhaps these two football people would like to justify the means to make these dogs exceedingly aggressive and attack another dog. Being social animals, this is not usual behaviour for dogs. This aggressiveness is induced. It is taught - if you wish to call it ‘teaching.’ By all standards of decency, the aggressiveness is taught by cruel, inhumane means. In simple terms, the dogs are tortured to be aggressive and pack / social instincts to fellow canines are extinguished. - Perhaps some consider this ‘good fun.’ I contend that a majority of people see this as cruelty.

I would recommend they watch some National Geographic shows. The natural world is vicious. And then there was my friend Darryl's dog who'd sooner kill another dog that "socialize" with it. He was anything but social. He didn't like most people either. And when he fought dogs, he went for the throat. To kill. Au natural. No breeding. No training.

I'm tired of our wussified culture. I'm tired of the intrusive government and its power. Dog fighting is what the federal government thinks is a priority these days. That says it all.

Coyote Attacks New Jersey Toddler

Would it be okay to shoot the coyote? It's okay here in Texas, but in New Jersey, can you defend your family from predators?

Cute Knut the Murderer

It was bound to happen. Nature taking it's course and all.