Category Archives: pets

Garfield; Dog in heat; Social security

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Normally I wouldn’t waste my time bashing a comic strip. Particularly not Garfield, since I really don’t ever read the comic. But, while in my daily surfing routine (internet that is), I happened to see a link to the latest Garfield comic, so I decided to check it out. It wasn’t even slightly humorous.

Just for fun I decided to take a peek at all of the Garfield comics from the month of January to see if there was anything there worth reading/viewing. Unfortunately, Flux’s bitch about Garfield, on BlackChampagne.com was 100% accurate: The comic strip isn’t even trying any more.

Here I offer up as evidence three strips which I gleaned from the internet. Their sole purpose to show you that I did indeed subject myself to all of the comics for the month. Well, that and proof that the strip isn’t even trying.



Note how in the first strip there appear to be 3 identical frames, the only change being Jon’s mouth? Then compare the Garfield from the first strip with the one in the third strip, do you think he looks a bit similar as well? Also the Jon from the second strip bears a pretty striking resemblance to the Jon from the third strip, and not just because it is the same guy.

There is toy that both my wife and I remember fondly, it was available in the late ’70’s to early ’80’s, I can not seem to find a link to the toy since I can’t remember the manufacturer, or the name of the toy. It is similar to This. The idea is that you have a background ‘board’ (which is a scene from your favorite show; Scooby doo, the Smurfs, you name it) and then you have decals that you can stick on it. You can make millions of different scenes, but the characters are always going to look exactly the same. When I got the G.I. Joe version of the peel and stick thing, it actually made it so that you could position the arms and legs (since the decals were separate from the torso). Now I am beginning to believe that Jim Davis might have died some time ago, and some jack-ass with an old Garfield peel and stick toy is ruining the strip. At least I wish that I was believing that, unfortunately I seem to be believing that Davis just enjoys the paycheck so much that he quit caring about quality at least 15 years ago.

As luck would have it, I did just find the type of book that I was looking for. All you have to do is do a google search for reusable sticker book. Who would have thought the answer would be so simple. No wonder someone was able to find an old Garfield sticker book and take over the strip.

• In other news, our smaller puppy (Zelda) has been in heat for the last week or so. She has the swollen parts to prove it! Our larger puppy (Warlock) seemed to finally sense this only moments ago, as he mounted up and started humping her. He doesn’t have any balls though, which leaves me a bit curious as to why is even trying to give it a go. Only slightly curious. And he has declined repeated requests to be interviewed about the subject, his stock response has been a simple bark.

• The idea of making Social Security a private fund has been on my mind since it was announced. The reason for that (it being on my mind) is that if it were in private accounts it would be in the stock market and based on an individual’s own decisions. If the Technology Boom that happened in the late ’90s, and the subsequent, catastrophic drop of tech stocks a few years ago, can make any point at all, it is this: Your average investor is really dumb.

Even during the technology boom there were people that were afraid to jump on, knowing that it could come crashing down at any second -which was true. Problem is that those investors watched as the other guys got in on the ground floor and made millions. That made your average investor want to get into the market when it was already terribly overpriced, leaving many the average investor broke; Most of the more intelligent investors would have gotten out long before the average guy tried to get in. Which leads pretty nicely into this piece that I saw on the Washington Monthly today.

I try not to be at all political around here. But the thought of tax breaks for the rich will lead directly to tax hikes for the middle class, and that is something that I find fundamentally wrong. I hate taxes myself (I do have to pay a fair share for my capital gains and dividends every year), possibly more than the very wealthy, but I can not see giving tax breaks to the highest earners when you know it will lead to tax hikes for the low/middle earners. If you follow along that scenario, eventually the low/middle earners will all be in poverty while the uppper class is in luxury. That will always result in a dictatorship.

Isn’t it funny how the U.S. administration seems to be trying to force us back a couple of centuries every time they pass a bill?

Gotta go. I have a brother who is gay. I don’t want this post to get intercep……

Holidays and birds

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So, just a quick recap of my last couple of posts. I/we own birds, Diamond Darrel died. Yup that pretty much sums it all up.

That all led me to remember about the little headstone that I made for the first bird, Elvis. Which you can see here. It doesn’t look quite the same in digital form as it does in person, however, that really bad writing on it looks just the same either way. I never realized how difficult it would be to use a small brush to write on concrete before I made this little headstone. Now that I do know, I will likely never try to do it again. As the little pine needles in the front make it a bit difficult to read, I will mention that the date on the stone is 5-20-02. Which was, obviously, the day he died.

Never in my life did I ever imagine that I would feel such an emotional attachment to a pet that I would actually place a headstone above the grave, yet, in this case I did. I didn’t even feel that close to the little bird Elvis, but I did have to bury him. While it would be nice to not feel any emotion while performing such a task, I was overcome with emotion when it got to the point of putting the little bird into his grave. My eyes teared more for my wife than for myself, but they did tear. That is why I made that little crappy headstone for Elvis; It is extremely difficult to deal with the death of a pet, especially if you have to play the role of the one who lays the pet to rest.

Much on a side note, I buried Elvis outside of the block fence, since we had just acquired our first dog at about the same time. It turns out that my paranoia was reasonable, as our second dog is prone to digging holes all over the yard. The last thing that you want/need to see is one of your pets carrying the mummified or rotten corpse of a different pet towards you.

I really haven’t liked the birds since we first got them, and I don’t think my sentiment has changed much in all these years, however, I did create the only headstone I have ever created for the sake of one of those birds. In thinking about it, I realize that I created that much more for my wife than for myself.

Hindsight is always 20/20, isn’t it?

• Being damn near Christmas already, I went ahead and took care of the festive house light situation. Since I didn’t take the lights down last year, you would think it was easy. Unfortunately, time had knocked off a major strand in the back, screwed up the arrangement on the ones on the side and made the string in the front take a bit more coaxing to get going. If you are going to be lazy, make sure that you buy strands of strings that can handle your laziness. They should absolutely be waterproof, windproof, sunproof, hell everything proof. If you can’t find lights that meet those criteria, maybe you should just leave them up for the christmas season and store them away after.

• There are ways to avoid the Christmas decoration Snafu. Most of them involve the death of at least on relative, and are not recommened. However, if you can kill only one person and make a perfect Christmas, I would really like to shake your hand (LOL or email). That would take some doing.

One must remember that the majority of people who celebrate Christmas are parasites. No one ever offers their home or services for the purpose of the meal right until it is on the table. Of course they only offer to butter bread after that. Which sucks, since they aren’t gonna stay around to wash the butter off of the dishes either.

Holidays Suck

Pearl Harbor and pets

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Being that it is the seventh of December, and me being American, I must mention that this is the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. This happened well over thirty years before I was born, mind you, and I know of it only from the shows that I see on television, along with the history that I saw in text books. The most famous quote of all being from F.D.R.(?) saying that “this will be a day that will live in infamy.”

Much like any other historical event, I didn’t really have any perspective on the Pearl Harbor attack. History just seems to be all in black and white, and we don’t think about it until it happens again. While the attacks on 9/11 were not the same type of attacks, that is the closest thing that I have seen to relate to Pearl Harbor. For some reason, the attacks of 9/11 made the attack at Pearl Harbor seem more real to me.

I know that this is all pretty faulty logic. Japan did what they did as a nation declaring war on another nation. The 9/11 attacks were done by a few random guys, from a small terrorist cell, and can not possibly be compared to an all out strategic war against my/our homeland. This is, of course, just me trying to find a frame of reference, of course there are none.

Not to mention that I am going nowhere with that train of thought. I just wanted to mention the date, since I remembered long before I saw anything in the news. That is something that did not happen prior to 9/11.

• Now on to trains of thought that actually lead somewhere (I hope).

I have often shown myself to be a very proud dog owner, and voiced my dislike for cats. Here at the house, though, we are certainly not a ‘one pet’ monopoly. In addition to the two dogs, we also have quite the collection of cockatiels. One of which you can see to the right.

When I say that we have a collection of cockatiels, that does not even start to scrape the surface of our cockatiel ownership over the last few years… It started out rather innocolously, you see. My mother-in-law bought my wife a pair of cockatiels for christmas a few years ago. They were brother and sister, and subsequently named ‘Elvis’ and ‘Belle’. Unfortunately, Elvis died only a few months after we had gotten him (I made him a little headstone when I buried him, perhaps I will take a picture of the headstone at a later date). Anyhow, that left the wife with one living bird. The wife was unhappy with just a single living bird, so we had to get another bird. And, as luck would have it, we got one that was extremely fertile.

Over the next six months, the new male bird and the original bird, Belle, managed to pump out an amazing number of offspring. That number is exactly 12 (I just fact-checked that with the wife).

Of those twelve birds, we were able to sell seven of them, well eight really, but one of the buyers returned the bird later saying that she just couldn’t stand his ‘ornory behavior’. Here I must note that birds are not tame creatures by nature. You see, they are usually living in the wild. If you want to have a tame bird, it will require constant handling of the bird. If you lock them in the cage (as we have done for, well, since they were born) and don’t make the effort to play with/entertain them, you are going to end up with birds that are not tame. We did try to tame the babies at the start, but then the parents started screeching, neither of us was home often enough to take them out, etc.

While our birds may not be the most tame, I bet that they are the most beautiful. The two images that I posted were of some of the offspring of the original birds (well, not Elvis). The fact that both of those birds are also male makes them a unique investment for breeders. Most cockatiels (of the male persuasian) are just solid grey, no coloring in the face at all. Combining that with the fact that our breeding pair made not only a lot of colors on the little boys, but also produced a few Lutinos, makes the little guys a virtual gold mine.

If you happen to have a pair of birds that can produce both many-colored males, as well as the coveted ‘Lutino female’, you have yourself a damn nice (and financially gaining) set of birds. Of course, after all this time, we just want the birds to quit reproducing. We put them into separate cages to try to expedite the ‘non-reproducing’ agenda. When they mate it does yield very pretty, pretty birds, but it is also a lot of work. Work that we no longer want to deal with. That is why I showed the pictures that I did today, they are birds that have been sold to a breeder. The line will continue, thankfully, I won’t have to be actively involved in it.


Kodak and Zelda

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Following on the dog theme over the last couple of posts, I was happily snapping away with my little digital camera. While it is a refurbished, bottom of the barrel Kokak CX4200, I am pretty happy with the results. I do suppose that your average ‘professional photographer’ would have all kinds of issues with the thing, but then, your average ‘professional photographer’ wouldn’t have been doing bottom-of-the-barrel shopping in the first place…would he? I am sure that this is not the camera for you if you plan to make museum quality prints, but when your venue is the internet and you just want it to look pretty good (as opposed to looking jaw-droppingly beautiful), 59 bucks for a used one of these will kick the shit out of a thousand for whatever the next ‘change the world’ digital recorder happens to be. Mark my words, “I will never pay more than 100 dollars for a camera” (might need to include a clause relating to inflation in that statement), last year’s model works wonderfully, thank you. Yes, additional optical zoom would be great, since just seeing the flower didn’t give me the ‘true essence’ of its beauty, while looking at it through a microscope would, and etc.

But, it is my intention to talk, once again, about our little puppies. So I shall.

Previously, I posted a little picture of the puppy Zelda doing her best to look like the sphinx. While that didn’t generate any feedback (hell, nothing I write ever does), I wanted to do a bit more to illustrate the condition that she has. That is where the camera comes in.

Usually, it is pretty hard to get a photo of Zelda doing anything. She moves pretty quickly. As in the photo that you see to your right. She moved a bit too quickly for the camera to catch the weird angles that her hind legs were in only a fraction of a second ago. Still it is an unusual pose; How can any dog manage to work its Stifle joint in that way? Let alone the hock? It is just the way that Zelda lays.

This second photo is of Zelda’s rear end, when I caught her by surprise. In this photo (which can be viewed at a much larger scale if you click on it, as well as the previous photo), you can see just how far away from the norm her laying position is. I know that it looks ‘Photo shopped’, but I swear that it is not. This is how Zelda lays much of the time. I even just loaded the much larger version, and it still looks like a fake to me, but I took the picture, and it isn’t fake. Perhaps, in the future, I will be able to get a shot of Zelda when she is ‘not quite’ looking freakish, but for now all I have is normal or freakish. It is not my fault that I wasn’t able to get her in better light before I started to snap away. It is not her fault that she always jumps up and licks me when I am in the room, yet, it is unfortunate that I wasn’t able to get a good shot of that leg that didn’t look like I faked it.

Now I must thank the little puppy Zelda for giving me a few days of bitching fodder, as well as some nice photos. Zelda is a very happy, affectionate little pup, but when the time comes to decide between hip surgery or death, unfortunately, I fear, Zelda might receive the latter.

Now that I have stated publicly that money is more important than a pet, I leave you with only this thought. Do you actually ever cry when you lose money? What about a pet?

Christmas trees and puppies

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Holy Fuck! When did it turn into December? Damn it, last I knew it was still July and I was dealing with issues that didn’t relate to last minute Christmas shopping. I suppose I should have seen December coming, what with the whole passing of Labor day, Halloween, Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving. Yet, somehow, I am still caught a bit off guard. Christmas is only supposed to happen near the end of December, and while it concerns me (in the gifting portion), it is not to be thought about or spoken of for the rest of the year. Unfortunately, that time is now upon us, that means that my usual cop-outs don’t really apply. Damn this modern society.

Thankfully, my wife is far more into the spirit of Christmas than I am. She is a crafty little devil, and makes some sort of trinket for most of the friends and family every year. Usually, she just hand paints some of the ceramic ornaments (which are really cheap at every craft store), but this year she decided to do something a bit different. That something different involved this particular item on the right.

It is not, as I had assumed, some sort of a weird, French, sexual device, no, no, way more mundane than that. Just her mock-up of a christmas tree. Note that it is complete with a little pot to stand in, and it is painted the traditional color for the said tree. Note also that the top is adorned with a star, as opposed to an Angel (while I did not ask the wife if there was any significant reason why, I am pretty sure that there are exactly two reasons. The first is that she, also, is not religious. The second is that I bet it would be damn hard to find an angel that small to top a tree.). The whole thing stands about, roughly, 10 or 12 inches tall, and never makes it past being about three inches wide. Well, never until she starts to decorate it. That little sucker looks better and better as the ornaments go on, and not just visually…

Here we see the finished product (placed on the left side of the screen for the purpose of variety). For some reason it looks like everything was photoshopped onto the initial picture, I assure you that that is not the case (likely the reduction of color depth makes it look a bit cartoonish, but what am I to do? The image would have been 1.4 megs if I hadn’t tried to reduce it…). Her little Christmas tree is ornamented by a whole bunch of little candies, which she attached to it with straight pins. I am really not sure where she got the idea to try it, but it really does look nice -much better in person-. Between the little pots, the foam cones, the stars and all of the candy, not to mention the paint, and the time that it took her to build them, she is probably, monetarily, about five dollars into each one of these little guys (not counting for time spent, of course). Of course, as with anyone with an ability for crafting, the end result seems to be the payoff.

What are the odds that you are going to be opening up presents this year, come to one from Uncle Jed, and find something so unique? It certainly beats socks, as a gift.


• It seems that I can not talk enough about my dogs puppies. Today I will present the other side of the lovable little guys.

Here we see one of their faux death matches. While it appears that Zelda (the nearer one in the photo) has all four feet on the ground, the reality is that Warlock has one paw on her neck and one paw on the ground, while Zelda is swiping at Warlock’s front leg. She did hit that front leg at the conclusion of this little sparring session, that left Warlock on his back and pretty much defenseless. Then they both got up, drank some water, went outside and started barking at the world in general.

I think that I, more than most, understand that the dogs are just playing. However, when you see this nice little shot of Warlock, you might think that his intentions are not to be playful. Zelda was going for his throat, of course, but man that is a really menacing smile (with pearly white teeth, I might add, we do take care of our little dogs puppies). Of course, Warlock was on the bottom of that battle, as he always is. Warlock always submits to Zelda, regardless of the fact that he weighs almost twice as much as she does. My wife tells me that it is ‘normal behavior’ for pack animals. The Wolves are always led by a dominant female, that sort of thing. I got nothing against that, but, dear God, Warlock is damn near 80 pounds. Zelda, on the other hand, is like 40 pounds, soaking wet. Gain some machismo, Warlock.

Yet, I suppose, at the end of the day, if you are going to be getting your ass kicked this badly, you may as well concede victory. If I am ever in a battle, then take on the fetal position, I will likely begin to beg for my life. I am only as proud as my circumstances dictate. The most thankfull part of that whole scenario is that I have the knowledge and ability to use a doorknob. If dogs ever decide to stop licking their asses, hell, cats even, for an extended period of time, they may figure out that doorknobs are just not that big of an obstacle.

I certainly fear the day when our pets rise up and overthrow us, mostly because there will be cats involved. I don’t really have anything against cats, per se, but my wife is allergic to their fur, and I have never felt the need to have one around me. Not that I dislike cats, just that it is nice to point to something and have your pet stare at something other than your finger.


I suppose my two cents isn’t worth much.


Warlock and Zelda

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Unfortunately, I did not get any email about the movie discussion yesterday. That really leaves me without a lot of bitching fodder. Of course that is the main reason why my posts have become less frequent in the first place. Not that I am actively looking for publicity or anything, just that it would be nice to think that someone other than myself, or my wife, was/is reading what I write. That, too, is a bit of a catch-22; more people would likely read if I were to update more often, while I would update more often if more people were reading…

That is the beauty of having my own website. There is certainly no one wanting to advertise here, nor are there any sponsors. That allows me to say what I want, when I want. How this differs from starting a site at Blogspot is that I can use profanity to make a point. Which, when I think about it, doesn’t really seem to be worth the price I pay to host the site. Noting that, I will call this site a hobby, something I do to keep me from doing something worse… You know, like, becoming a priest.

• Now that it is pretty well established that I do not have a point to talk about (not that you would expect one, had you read the site previously), I will move on to a subject that is sure to please the masses. I am sure that you are asking yourself what subject that could be, well, puppies, of course.

Here we see the puppy ‘Zelda’ (who is a vicious pit bull, and thus a confirmed killer), doing her best to look exactly like the Sphinx. This is how she lays down all the time, not a pose. Well, when she is sleeping she doesn’t lay this way, but the rest of the time she does. Usually her head is resting on her paws, but when she sees someone looking at her she gets all Egyptian. Most dogs are not able to lay just like that, her hind legs are not actually under her body, they are sticking out behind. That is why it looks like her back end is as wide as her shoulders. This is something that she has always done, however, we are forced to feed her gluosamine for that malady (which I think may be Canine Hip Dysplasia, but certainly hope is not). She lays like that with or without the glucosomine, but she seems to be in much less pain when she gets her daily pill.

Yes, I know there will be arthritis problem much later in her life. I know that she will be in a lot of pain until she dies, but when you see how happy she is now, you kind of have to disregard the future. Take yourself, for instance, if someone was able to tell you what you would die from (be it kidney failure, car accident, etc.), would you want to die just then? Chances are that you would want to live as long as possible. Which is the goal with the puppy ‘Zelda’. She will be alive right until the time that she no longer seems to be happy. If she is in constant pain, it would be better to ease the pain for the pet than to prolong the pain for both her and us. Now I am getting misty-eyed thinking about that decision, which is many years away. Glucosamine is working for her now, she is happy and healthy, we will destroy bridges once they are reached (and hopefully after we cross them).

Fear not! We have multiple puppies!

Some might argue that dogs are no longer ‘puppies’ once they reach a certain size or weight. I am not ‘some’. Can you look at those cute little puppies lying there and try to call them dogs? Here we see both Warlock and Zelda viciously killing what they kill most of the time, that being the better part of a day. Perhaps they were off mauling children earlier in the day, being vicious dogs, I dunno, I doubt it. Unfortunately, both of the dogs looked up when I stood up with the camera, else you would have seen them laying with their backs/bodies/heads right together (it was cute, trust me).

Okay, that was the puppy story for the next random amount of time.

Vicious, vicious killers. Stay away from them, they might lick you right to death.

An interesting side note, both of the dogs really hate mexicans. I am not saying that to be stereotypical, I am saying that because of you are hispanic, and you knock on our door, the dogs will be extremely vicious. If you are anything other than hispanic, the dogs will jump up and lick you. I don’t have any explanation for this behavior, but I do find it both unfortunate and humorous.

Olympics; Puppy

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There is not a lot to say about the news these days. There is the Repuclican National Convention going on in New York City, the 2004 Olympics going on in Athens, of which the American public can watch about 10% of, and that is only when there is an American competitor actually fares well in said event. While it would be nice to actually watch the competition in the Olympic games, it loses something in the chopped up, American highlight type shit that you get to watch here in the states. Considering that none of the events play live on our National Networks, I would rather just not watch it at all.

A friend told me, recently, that they have live streaming video coming from the Olympic games. I am not sure if that is true or not, what I am sure of is that I am crutched by a 56k internet connection and not likely to watch every fifth frame of a video while still considering it “live”. Isn’t that supposed to be some of the glory of the Olympics? You see the people (from any random country) who perform their chosen sport the best? Our media, in the U.S.A., obscures that by only showing events where the U.S.A. athletes perform well, then they fill the time by telling stories of the “hard up-bringing” that the athletes had to overcome to achieve their Olympic dreams. Sure, that does make for a great movie, but what I want to see is the competition.

If the American gymnast totally fucks up, breaks a leg or something, I want to see, at the very least, the medal winners’ performances. This (the Olympic games) is the only venue where people from all countries can compete against each other on an equal footing. Yet, once the U.S.A. is out of the running, the media just seems to shift to a personal story of tragedy that left that particular person without a Mother and Father, which, in turn, made him/her want to compete in the Olympics. I swear that the media is using some formula similar to this…

Yet, my bitch today is not even related to the Olympics. More related to something that I noticed, and tested a few times, regarding computer opponents in actual games.

It is Tuesday, August 31, 2004

I was stopped just as I started yesterday’s bitching, by a puppy (well, full-grown dog that is smaller than the average full-grown dog of it’s breed). That would be our puppy Zelda, who was so angered/whiny when big brother dog went for a walk with mom that I finally just caved in and followed behind them. I originally had hopes of catching up to them before we reached the park, but there was an issue with the fact that Zelda was so excited and jumpy that it was difficult to get the harness on to her.

If you are not a dog owner, especially the owner of rather large dogs, you really need to know about the harness before you do get a dog. The normal way that idiots (most dog owners) walk their large dogs is to use a ‘choke chain’ (I linked there to an article about the disabilities that such collars could cause for a good reason). A ‘Choke Chain’ could be used to great effect by an experienced dog trainer, yet the device is regulary used by any jack-ass who has a dog.

There actually are ways to train a dog on your own, ways that do not involve asphyxiation and broken necks. The easiest way is through positive reinforcement, you know a simple little treat you give the puppy when it does the vocal command. It is not an exact science, nor is it immediate, but it does teach the dog that rewards will be given for performing certain tasks. As time goes on the rewards get smaller, no longer a chewy treat, just a little tummy rub or the such, but the dog will still respond to the vocal command and perform the task.

The unfortunate thing is that any person, who can show a photo ID, can get a pet. That is if they try to get them from a rescue shelter, there aren’t any laws governing who can take a puppy or kitten that they find three houses over. While cats come out of the womb pretty much ‘litter box broken’, it takes some time for a puppy to realize that it is supposed to do the majority of its bathroom duties outside. The little puppy might not understand that you left the pile of Newspapers in the corner so that he would ‘do his business’ on it, but if you show the dog the place that he did pee, then put him on the newspapers, he/she will soon learn that the papers are there for their peeing purposes. After a bit of time, say two weeks if you have a puppy that was just weaned, those papers will get so close to the door that the only time there will be pee anywhere but on the papers is when the dog gets a bit too excited.

Once the dog is ‘house-broken’, a process which could take between a couple of weeks and a couple of years, depending on your level of interaction with him/her, the rest is easy. There is no need for a ‘Choke Chain’, all you need is “Mr. Newspaper”. At least 80-90% of the time, you never have to swing ‘Mr. Newspaper’, you just have to roll it up and look at the puppy. Sure fear tactics are bad and everything, but would you rather all but kill your new puppy with a choke chain, or have it fear a rolled up newspaper?

My/Our dogs are far from perfect, Warlock will chase anything that makes a reflection, while Zelda will bark at any other dog that gets near Warlock. We try to teach them using the command/treat method, and while neither one of them is perfect about following the commands, and neither one would be trusted in a room alone with a child, they are pretty obedient dogs. There has NEVER been a ‘Choke Chain’ on either of these dogs (well, once when Warlock was young, but it lasted only a day or two). We do love our dogs, hell, they are basically our children, there is no way that I would try to strangle a human, why would I do it to a canine?

We (my wife and I) are doing this with larger breed dogs. Warlock has to weigh 60 pounds or so, while Zelda is a very fierce 35 or so pounds. I think that absolute obedience might be impossible, at the very least it is only possible through an obedience school that knows how to correctly use a ‘Choke Chain’. We are not going to be using the ‘Choke Chain’ though, since they have these Harnesses that you can buy pretty cheap.

You just have to remember that you do outweigh the dog by at least a hundred pounds. You certainly don’t have to choke the dog to get obedience, and if you do you don’t deserve to have a pet…Or a child, for that matter.

Links circa ’04; D-day; Puppies

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First I just want to mention that I updated the music lost to history feature on the side bar. The previous song that I had on there just went so extremely long with my comments that I felt compelled to write more than I wanted to to try to make the actual text of the site at least as long as the side bar. That led to a lot of half-assed stuff towards the end of the posts. Sort of like adding the “very, very, very, very much” to your report to make it meet the minimum number of words. Also I recently listened to the Megadeth song Hook in Mouth again recently and it was not nearly as cool as I remembered it. Not that the Alice Cooper one that replaced it has been nominated for any awards either.

• When I log on to the internet I go through a little routine. First to check my local email, then to check the website email. After that is done I go to BlackChampagne to check for updates, as he can be as erratic as me when it comes to a posting schedule. The next click is only a few days a week that I go and check out DiabloII.net the frequency of my visiting that site has dwindled down to almost nothing as the content no longer seems to matter by the time it is posted, I do still enjoy the guest articles on occasion. Once I have done all of that, I start to do my “real reading”, that is reading for the sake of finding things to spark my interest and make me want to write a post. Political Animal is the next site that I visit. It is a liberal political blog that often has a lot of interesting information both on it and linked to from it. After that there are numerous news sites that I will hit looking for something to set me off. By now I am sure that you are wondering what the hell all of this has to do with anything. I will get to it soon enough.

Today on the aforementioned political blog site, I saw this particular headline, “CLICK THIS….Via Unfogged, Microsoft has been granted a patent on double clicking.” Now that really seemed to be just a tad unbelievable, and as I found out with a quick news search, it was. Not that I can fault anyone for linking to sites that don’t quite have the whole story, especially when the story is just breaking, but in this case it just seemed wrong. From what I was able to understand about the actual patent that was issued it was about portable devices, such as PDA’s and the software’s ability to recognize very specific actions done with the user interface. It seems to have absolutely nothing to do with a mouse, as the headline would lead you to believe, whether that was the intention of the author or not. That is exactly the reason why I mentioned that I do go and read news sites before I post anything here, I do not want to go into a rant about a half-assed rumor, as I certainly would have done on this issue had I not educated myself a bit about it before I started writing a post.

• Tomorrow is the sixth of June, besides the obvious reason that people will remember the date, that being that it is the date in the fabled song Convoy by C.W. McCall, it is also my other brother’s birthday. No, they were not twins that were born an agonizing 48 hours of labor apart, they were actually born three years apart, the fact that their birthdays are only two days apart just means that ma and pa were often frisky in September, while my birthday is in july it seems that the friskiness kept on for a month or so. In the interest of journalistic integrity (or something), I just called my mother (at damn near ten p.m.) to ask if the september date might coincide with their wedding anniversary (a fact I would likely know had they not divorced when I was like seven) and it turns out their anniversary is actually in August. So my next assumption was that September was when children go away to school, but as the oldest brother would only have been two when the other brother was conceived that theory went down faster than Monica Lewinski.

Also, the sixth of June is the anniversary of “D-Day”, when the beaches were over-run at Normandy and the tide of WWII began to change, thus leading to the eventual defeat of Hitler. All that is fascinating reading, and likely great for the world as a whole, but had it not been for C.W. McCall’s song “Convoy”, we likely would never have had the movie Smokey and the Bandit. Now you just have to ask yourself which was more important, the fall of Nazi Germany and the end of World War 2, or the release of Smokey and the Bandit. I have made my choice…

• Now that I have exposed myself as the trailer trash that I am, which is unfortunate as I never really called a trailer a dwelling for long, I guess I must move on to bigger and better things. Of course having nothing bigger or better to move on to, I will just continue with the same mindless dribble you have grown accustomed to. That being puppy stories.

Now that the Zelda puppy has overcome her previous problem, she has gone right back to the intimidation/ass-kicking thing that she is known for. Yes, she is constantly whipping Warlock’s ass, despite the fact that he outweighs her by a good twenty pounds. Of course he doesn’t have any testicles, but still, he outweighs her by like 1/3rd. He is about fifty-sixty pounds while she is in the 30-40 pound range. I suppose if Warlock had some male dogs as peers he would be a bit more interested in trying to win the fights as it would look really bad for any male entity to get their ass kicked by a girl that is smaller than them (unless they know martial arts), but man, it is usually ‘no contest’ type stuff. He will just admit defeat and run away. He then will lay down to sleep in a closet or under a desk (as he is currently) so that mean old Zelda can’t come and beat him up again. Of course after the death matches (where no death is involved, so that might not be the appropriate term), they can be seen licking tongues within five minutes. Strange thing the differences in interaction between humans and interaction of animals.

Java game; Dog toes;

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As stated above it is the fourth of June. This is my eldest brother’s 34th birthday. Though I do not have any way to contact him, nor do I know where he is even living, I will say Happy Birthday here. Just in case he has caught word of this site through one of the relatives that actually know the URL. However unlikely that is, I made the gesture. Fifty years down the road, you know when I am dead from stress, smoking and alcoholism, he will be able to read through the stuff that is saved to my hard drive and see that while I don’t know where he is, or how to contact him, I actually thought about him on his birthday. Of course in that scenario it would be his 84th birthday when he reads this and the odds of him making it to 84 are no better than mine. Perhaps this entire paragraph is a moot point?

This is just a random curiosity that I have. Why do the colors of a dog’s toes dictate the color of the toenails? I am sure that I could google around a bit and find a very scientific response to that question, I am just wondering as a layman without so much desire to know the answer as to go and look it up. I mean sure the skin pigment would be passed to the nail, since the cuticle is what actually makes the nail grow, right? If that is the case, why don’t black people have black fingernails? As I said, that is just a curious thought that I had today and am not so intrigued by that I actually want to spend the next hour reading articles about cell composition and the such. If you happen to have the simple answer, in layman’s terms, you know what to do.

• There is a bit of trouble brewing on the home front. I am not going to discuss that here because, 1) I do not have any intention of airing my family’s dirty laundry on this site, and 2) You would only be getting my side of the story. As with everything there are at least two sides to every story. Perhaps you are better than I am at separating fact from fiction, but I tend to believe the story that I hear first. I suppose that I would be bad in a jury for exactly that reason. The prosecution gets to go first, they make you believe that the guy did it, then it is up to the defense to make you switch your opinion. If this country was truly based on the legal ‘innocent until proven guilty’ premise, shouldn’t the defense go first? Paint the guy as a simple painter who got flim-flammed into something that he didn’t understand…Not that the trouble on the home front involves anyone actually being put on trial or going to prison or anything, just that it would be a bit unfair for me to put my side of the story here without giving the other people involved equal time to voice their view.

This damn democratic society has infected me!

• I wrote about the popularity of the little java game Lightz Out back on March 19th. I am still getting emails at my old email address requesting the source code for the game. I really wish that I had known what I was doing as I programmed that game, as I think that everyone is going to look at that code in ‘what the fuck’ mode, but I am still getting requests for the code. For my ease I am going to go ahead and link to the file that I uploaded to this site previously, just in case someone searches for it. That will happen when I get around to it of course. Until that time, you can find the link to the source code Right Here. Just keep in mind that I have absolutely no idea what I am doing when I program Java. I know some of the basic arguments and I use them and guess and check until it works. Why the damn Lightz Out game has such staying power is totally beyond me.

• The little puppy Zelda seems to have overcome her malady. She is running and barking just like she did before she was stricken with the…problem. The thing about her little problem is that it may have been caused by the fact that she lays on the floor with her hind legs in very odd positions. My wife and I have talked frequently about how they seemed to be out of socket (some of her joints I mean) while she is casualy laying on the floor. She is back to laying in exactly the same manner now. My wife wants to give her Glucosamine for joint flexibility, but I am starting to think that we probably shouldn’t do that since she likes to sit in postions that would likely break the legs of most canines.

The Glucosamine, as well as children’s aspirin, helped her to get past the pain of her injury, but giving her the drugs to promote joint flexibility will only make her lay in ever more awkward positions. The fact that you only have ten or twelve years to live with a dog should really make you want to make sure that they are happy and playfull for the entire time that they are with you. If she(Zelda) thinks that she is flexible again, she might injure herself again. There is no worse feeling for a pet owner than to see their pet suffering, and she did suffer considerably when she was stricken with her…problem.

Dogs; Dubya

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The puppy problems persist. Well, I don’t think that the problem really persists so much as the puppy is afraid that it still does and is walking quite carefully on the recently injured appendage. I base this assumption on the fact that when I got home to let the dogs out, after they had been locked up in the arizona room all day (which most canine companions would consider a spacious abode at about 160 square feet…Hell I have stayed in smaller hotel rooms), Zelda was jumping up and licking just like she did before she had the injury. I am sure that she is still not completely healed, but she is certainly doing a heck of a lot better. As I said previously, she still does tread a bit lightly on the leg that has the injury, but now it seems that it is more to make sure she doesn’t hurt the still tender tissues as opposed to the inability of a couple of days ago.

The one really unfortunate side effect of Zelda’s malady has been in the interaction between her and Warlock (the older dog). Warlock has been our dog for a couple of years now, and is a very clingy sort of dog. He is a happy, wagging, in-your-face type of dog all the time. Having had Zelda as a playmate all these months, Warlock has been tiring himself out playing with her rather than being so needy of us (my wife and I). With the injury to Zelda, Warlock is not able to go outside and frolic like he would with Zelda. That has led to him being a bit (saying ‘a bit’ is a real stretch) hyperactive around the house.

Zelda is healing but is still in no condition to go out and play with Warlock in the faux death match type playing that they normally engage in. This leads directly to Warlock not being happy, and whining a lot. I have tried to take him out and do the whole throw a ball thing, but he invariably will just run out to the ball, then stop, then look at me and walk back. I know that he is thinking, “But where’s Zelda”. Of course trying to explain anything to a dog is much like trying to swat flies with a hammer, so I don’t even try. He seems to know that there is something wrong with her, but he is not in a position to understand that her condition requires much rest and no ‘Dog Wars’.

There is also the fact that we do not know what the two of them do once we leave the house. Sure we know that they are locked in that little room, but what happens while they are locked in that little room? They both seem to enjoy each other – as I began to write that line, Zelda just went ballistic on Warlock.-

Zelda is much smaller than Warlock, yet she owns him. Even in her injured state, Zelda just handed him his ass, and he walked away happy that she let him have it. This makes me think that she is certainly getting better but that she knows that she is not totally healed yet. I really must get a video camera before she makes it to 100% healthy, ’cause I bet she is really going to give him a thrashing for picking on her while she was injured.

• In other news, or what passes for it here. Does anyone other that Dubya think that he is going to spend four more years in office? Having read a lot of news sites, then a lot of blog sites, I am not sure that he has a chance. He has pissed off everyone that is remotely liberal, he has pissed off a lot of people that are staunch conservatives, he has pissed off the rest of the free world as well as pissing off the rest of the world who are ruled by dictatorships. Who, if sober and not doing it as the result of a bet gone bad, is going to vote for him? He (Dubya) is trying to compare the ‘War on Terror’ to WWII. While I can understand that he needs to drum up some support for his agenda, I still think that he should go ahead and take the blame for leaving the “War on Terror” behind when he left Afghanistan and started attacking countries with better oil reserves. I would like to blame this on the American people for electing him as President, but as you will recall he was never elected to be the president. Sure he got the presidency through some hundred year old loop-hole, but he was certainly not elected.

I sure hope that if he is re-elected has enough corporate backers to buy him in again, he will look at the world rather than looking at his own bank account. Of course I could site my earlier quote about trying to kill flies with a hammer, since neither will ever happen. This is going a bit too political for me so I will end it here.

• There is one other thing on my mind tonight, but I can’t remember what it is. If I remember by this time tomorrow I will add some info about it, if I don’t you should just cherish this moment.