Judy.

Judy was a rescue puppy - I found her at this shelter when she was four months old.*  She looked exactly like a Yellow Lab, which is what I thought she was, for a month. Soon after bringing her home, she began to spring brown and tan spots, and her muzzle lengthened and her body morphed, and this was no mellow Yellow Lab. This was some weird, anxious, terrier/pointer mix. And while I like all sorts of dogs, I very much had chosen her for her suspected Lab breed - I wanted someone who would be mellow around small children, because we a) had small children and b) lived next door to a playground. And when you live next door to a playground, you quickly discovered that you need to keep your downstairs bathroom clean at all times, because mommas and their toilet training toddlers will bang on your door.

Judy was terrified of small children. I assume she was not socialized enough during that puppy developing psyche window before I brought her home. She liked adults well enough, and was not interested in chasing cats, but a small, quickly moving child made her bare her teeth in worry and defensiveness. We enrolled her in all sorts of puppy classes and really stayed on her, and she was fine with our kids, but we kept her from neighborhood children, just in case.

Fast forward five years. We lost everything and had to start over in California, and our landlord would not allow us to keep Judy. Thinking it was temporary, we sent her to live on a relative's farm, which suited her so much better. There were acres to run and only grownups there; she quickly mellowed and became a different dog, but it still ate at my heart, because I come from the school of Never Giving Up A Pet. Ever. You make a commitment, and you don't just hand over a pet like a pair of shoes that don't fit anymore unless that pet is a danger to your kids or your environment is no longer the best one possible. Judy loved her new life, although I missed her terribly and I still can't stand that we gave up my kids' dog, not on top of everything else they had lost.

Well, Judy's back. She's old, and her breath smells like Damp Corpse, and she sits sideways because her hips no longer work the way they are supposed to. But the mellow stuck. And my kids no longer have lost a dog. I'm a big fan of the whole "full circle" thing.

*Massachusetts is one of the largest importers of rescue puppies. The spay-and-neuter campaigns are so successful that they can ship puppies from Puerto Rico (the "Save A Sato" program, like Judy here), and from other areas, because the shelters are not overrun with local puppies. The airlines charge a nominal fee to ship the puppies on flights that have room in cargo for dog crates. It's a very cool system.  And most of the Satos (slang for "street dog")look alike.

This makes me tired.

My New Pink Button

Hey, gals, do you suffer from the Labia-blahs? Go from labi-blah to labi-beautiful!

Because NO PART OF YOU IS EVER OKAY.

I am going to make a mint by selling googly eyes and wee felt berets for men. Except I am not, because that would be stupid, because what man is going to adorn or bedeck his genitals in order to fight the shame he has about his body? It doesn’t happen.

Is this vag rouge a joke gift? Are we solving a real problem? How many women actually walk around worried because they feel their pigment is unsightly? Because, if someone with whom you are or with whom you wish to be intimate is in that region, and he or she is criticizing your pigment? Your biggest problem is not your pigment, baby, it’s that the person in your bed is doing the sex wrong. Push them – push them – out of your bed.

Boggled by Google

The delightful Bloggess wrote a bit about the mysteries of The Google. I read it and said, "Yeah, right" (in my head), because there was no way people were actually googling those things, right? She totally doctored her Google search page for humorous effect, because No. And then I tried it. And I got this:

So, not only did The Bloggess not falsify her Google search, which is a relief because I think that's a felony, but also? People are even scarier than I thought. Plus now with more stupid.

And why are we here?

Wanna burger?

I am working on my professional web site ("a portfolio thingy" is, I believe, the technical term), and it only took me twelve seconds to work in the words "penis puppetry." But that's because I interviewed them, not because I performed with them. Which I did not do. Seriously.

Although, if you were hiring a copywriter, wouldn't you want one who knows how to properly describe the act of making a balloon animal out of one's genitals for profit? What if I didn't know how to use the term in everyday copy? I might write "penis puppetry" in place of "customer service," and that could really redirect the tone of your trifold brochure.

It totally pays to hire a professional (copywriter, not weener puppeteer. Although one should probably be trained in either case). I find the penis puppet fellows have quite the following in Australia, with the call for many a show, and not so much in the Midwest of North America.  I don't really want to think about that too much, nor do I suggest you go to their site and click on the "Trick Of The Month." Except that you really should.

Mervin Peake

Lean sideways on the wind, and if bears your weight you are a daughter of the dawn.

If not, pick up your carcass, dry your eyes, brush down your dress, for that sweet elfin horn,

You thought you heard was from no fairy land. Rather, it flooded through the cellar floor,

From where your Uncle Eustace and his band of flautists turn my cellar, more and more,

Into a place of hollow and decay.

That is my theory darling, anyway.

California

Why robots will never completely be our overlords

The Beaver, Canada's second-oldest magazine (published since 1920), is changing its name because its emails keep getting removed by spam filters.

I have decided to spend 2010 as a young Sean Connery.

Original is here.

All heart, with some nose(s)

I am participating in CPR training tomorrow (please don't have a heart attack within my immediate vicinity for another 12-to-16 hours, thanks). And I am not saying I snuck a peek into the training box that was delivered a day early in preparation, or that I removed items from said box and lined them up and then photographed them, because that would have been wrong.

But if I had, they might look something like this:

I live in terror that someone, person or beast, will fall gravely ill near me. It's not that I fear death (but oh, how I do fear death!), or that I fear the work involved helping alleviate the suffering of others (but oh, how I do dread the suffering of others!) - I have given it a lot of thought and I think it's that sense of helplessness when someone needs you and yet you can do nothing for them.

So, yeah. I don't know how much will this help relieve that panicky feeling I get when a pet has a medical emergency, or when I must stay overnight to help an elderly friend get to the bathroom in the dark. Probably not much. But if you have radiating chest pain and are currently stored in a blue cloth zip bag, I soon will be able to pound on your chest most effectively. Baby steps, my friend. Baby steps.

Chase, master of the secrets that divide man from animal, animal from man!

True Story Tuesday

I went to college by blocking out one day and several nights into which I would wedge all my classes, and then the rest of the work week, I was a temp. This was in the early 1990s, when not everyone had PowerPoint and PageMaker on their computers, when knowing how to navigate them and also make a table in Word was fairly exotic-seeming stuff, and the pay was excellent. I had several long-term assignments, months-long, always with consulting companies, in Boston or nearby. One company set out huge containers of both plain and peanut M n Ms, and four differently flavored coffees, and catered breakfast and lunch several times a week. I cannot image how much money they burned through. It was an amazing place to work, and the workload was slow enough that I could do much of my homework there, as well.


The agency-client liaison assigned to me was a sweet guy, who, shortly after placing me, was hit by a semi while riding his bike. He recovered, but had short term memory loss; he would often call me three times in under ten minutes to offer me the same job, and apologize every time. "Did I just call you?" he would ask with a slight laugh each time I answered the phone.


Sometimes, he admitted to me, he was fairly certain, brain-damage be damned, he was actually Manimal and he was getting ready to go fight crime.

Nic Cage as Sarah Palin

Nic Cage as Everyone.

True Confession: Shameful Twitter Obsession

She posts the most astounding stream of Utter Crazy, perfectly under 140 characters, and usually spells quite badly. I check her tweets daily, worried about her near-constant state of agitation, and hoping she's suddenly become sane.