This blog is sincerely sorry for the death of the president’s dog. I truly do not wish such grief on anyone, even such an asshat as Mr. Bush. I pray that God will comfort his family in their loss.

–My right elbow is sore from getting yanked by Bart yesterday.

–I’m nice and clean: Had a late evening shower, which helps me relax.

–Its warm in my office.

–The dog has put herself to bed.

–I’m thirsty.

It’s quiet here. It’s only midnight, on a Friday night, but the neighbors are asleep. I haven’t heard the sprinklers go off yet.

As a result of the quiet and the thirst, I am very aware of my solitude. I am deep in it, steeped in it. Maybe with rain coming, the sprinklers won’t go off. Maybe there’s a guy in charge of that, turning the sprinklers off when rain is coming. How do you get a job like that. The rain god of the condo association. El Brujo of the little rain.

Overheard: Of course we’re all afraid. How could we not be? Here we are on this planet, we don’t know how we got here, and we don’t know where we’re going.

Yeah, worth pondering, huh? Even for those of us who are religious. When you think about it, the best itineraries we have are a tad vague. We’re traveling on faith.

Also overheard: FEAR = Fark Everything and Run

Bart is a big dog. You wouldn’t notice it so much from a distance, unless you’re a smaller person, but Bart’s pretty good sized. He’s a chocolate lab, deep brown, nice coat, big head with a friendly slobbery face, deep eyes. He is eighty pounds, best guesstimate, of pure canine muscle. I mean, this dog is strong and fast.

Bart’s not my dog. He’s not even my neighbor’s dog. He’s my parents’ neighbor’s dog. He’s an outside dog (I know, that’s stupid) and he doesn’t care much for being left alone. He figures that’s his time to roam, explore, sniff out the world. I’ve captured him before, and it wasn’t easy, and he wasn’t nearly as strong back then.

I was over at my parents’ place, middle of a quiet afternoon. Dad wasn’t home. Mom was talking to a visitor, and I glanced out the kitchen window. Just in time to see Bart head-butting the fence near the top of the driveway. He gave it a few good smacks and hopped right through, and down our driveway and into the world.

There was a car in the neighbor’s driveway but no one answered the bell, so down the street I went, after Bart. With no leash, no cell phone, not even the sense God promised me long ago. He was four houses down by then, peein’ on the bushes and barking at a little girl across the street. The poor kid was petrified, standing on the sidewalk with her hands clasped under her chin … he must have looked like an arctic wolf to her. I can’t guess why he was barking at her, but she didn’t like it. He crossed to her side of the street about 40 feet from her, she crossed towards me, and I went after the dog.

Got him by the collar, a thick leather job with a buckle and two tags. I had a good grip, like a rodeo cowboy on a bucking horse, and took maybe five steps toward home before he backed up, wiggled his big head, and left me holding the collar. He took off toward the park, galloping like Seabiscuit.

My Mom offered to help. I grabbed a leash and a phone and we set off in her car. Down to the park, then up a residential street, up the busy county road, down another street … and there he was, still peeing on every other bush. I tried again with the leash, but he took off, down the county road two blocks. I got out again, and this time he thought I smelled interesting. Which was a break for me.

I managed to slip the collar over his big brown head, with a leash attached that Mom bought for Happy, our Pomeranian, for Christmas. It’s the thickest, widest leash we have, about an inch of green an white nylon, decorated with little wreaths. She has a collar to match.

Great, I now had an 80 pound retriever on a leash that belongs to an 18 pound lapdog, and I can’t pull him forward because it’ll come off over his ears again. No way to coax him into the car, which doesn’t interest him anyway. (I thought it was pretty darn nice of my Mom to offer to let me put this big slobbering dog in her Lexus.) Well, I was getting pooped already, but off we went for walkies.

The first time he decided to pull, I wasn’t ready. I didn’t expect it. Picture yourself standing on the roof of a building, holding a line connected to an anvil, which somebody kicks over the side while you’re not looking. I’m a big guy; to be sort of honest, lets say a cross between an NFL lineman and this guy. Bart almost pulled me over. He proceeded to do that, though not unexpectedly, all the friggin way home. We got there. I put him back in his yard, while Mom shoved a garbage can up against the board in the fence where he broke it.

Dad came home in a while, and we were setting out to fix the fence, when Mom asked me if I’d closed the gate at Bart’s house. It was wide open. Yes, I’d closed it. The little sweetheart head-butted it until it opened, and he was gone again. Dad and I drove his usual streets, but Bart was nowhere to be seen. He had his collar on again, and God only knows how many times he’s gotten out. I’m one of several neighbors who have been dragged home by this dog, and there’s only so much you can do. By then, his family were home, making calls, sending out searchers … again.

I’m told that two men – friends of Bart’s owner – found him down near the freeway, preparing to merge onto the northbound 101. They put him back in the yard, and wired shut the gate. I hope that helps. My Mom said they were as impressed with his strength as I was. I wonder what they’re feeding that guy.

The morals of the story, and you knew it had some:

· That dog doesn’t belong out in the yard. It’s not safe for him. He belongs in the house, where he can smell his people in the environment when they’re not home.

· Bart’s a great dog. A big, rambling, Let me after them ducks, Daddy! kind of a dog. Is a small, suburban backyard the right environment for such a dog? I don’t know.

· Bart needs to be neutered, if he isn’t. That might help calm him down a bit.

· We can’t have big dogs roaming the neighborhood, scaring little kids.

· He could’ve been killed at several points during his afternoon of running amuk.

· I could’ve been bitten, though he’s never been aggressive to me before. That’s a big mouth with lots of teeth; I can picture a big lawsuit, with lots of damages.

Keeping our pets safe and secure is serious as a heart attack. And yes, I’m aware of the irony of that remark.

I was just surfing around and found this article from Feb 12, in which a nuclear official of the UN says the world may be headed for destruction due to nuclear technology proliferation. What struck me most about this wasn’t so much that we’re all going to die, which given our present leadership vacuum seems likely, but that some doofus at abcnews.com was just dense enough to follow the first two paragraphs with a big advertisement for mortgage loans.

The End of the World is Neigh! Repent & Refinance!

Check out this essay by Don Henley of the Eagles, in the Washington Post today. They’re Killing the Music. I don’t know that I can agree with Mr. Henley’s guarded hope that artists can wrest back some control of the music industry. I think the problem, which he terms systemic, has roots that run well outside music. Western culture, to the limited extent it ever existed in the US, is imploding like a pitiful souffle.

When I was a kid and we went to Disneyland, I remember being fascinated by the buildings. There are a great many buildings, especially upper floors, which aren’t shops or restaurants or rides … they aren’t open to guests, and have no apparent function. Tons of balconies and shuttered windows … what are those places?

Beyond wondering what they were, I remember imagining living up there. Wouldn’t that be sweet, to live in Disneyland, over a candy shop on Main Street or something? Here are a few sites where people have posted photos of such buildings:

http://www.dollarshort.org/disneyland/index.html

http://www.martinlee.co.uk/IMG_1335.JPG

http://www.anycities.com/user1/disneyworld/disney-world-orlando-magic-kingdom-main-street-usa-2.html

http://www.justdisney.com/images/Disneyland/aerial/dlandair.jpg

I also remember being enthralled by all the water at Disneyland. I always wanted to go swimming in various places, like the lagoon where the submarine was or take a dip off the paddle wheeler, or maybe splash around in Small World.

I’ve been sitting here staring at the screen, looking at my blog. I think the presentation is improved somewhat: it’s cleaner, less busy, easier to read. Now my thoughts flow to content. What’s missing, do you think? Maybe some things I learned on TV today, but Odd Todd is already doing that. Repetition is the death of art. I thought maybe some really rigorously honest true facts about myself. Too gruesome.

Baby, there’s an enormous crowd of people

They’re all after my blood

Three Dog Night, yeah. A sense of his place. … As Anne Lamott wrote in Bird by Bird, the cheese stands alone, but decides to take a few notes. Which with irrefutable rationality brought me around to Bullwinkle:

Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of a hat!

Okay okay, you wanna know what I did today?

–Woke up late, residual effects of yesterday’s serious suckage.

–Turned over and dozed another hour, feeling – as Holden Caulfield would put it, “blue.”

–Got up, read e-mail, showered, gave the doggie her medicine.

Wait, let’s get back to that “blue” thought. Ever see the paintings of George Rodrigue? He’s a really talented painter. Blue dogs, you see. Has a gallery, up the coast, in Carmel. Check out one of his paintings:

http://www.georgerodrigue.com/loupgarou.jpg

Blue reminds me, have you checked out my little story, How to Eat an Orange? Wait, don’t read it. It actually mentions eating an orange. More than once. I wish I had one right now! I’m thirsty and an orange would taste wonderful; a good one, from Dad’s tree. So don’t read that. Instead, go and read Frank O’Hara’s poem Why I Am Not A Painter.

view/add comments (0) :: updated Tuesday, 17 February 2004 01:38 AM GMT-08 ::

Look, I’ve had a bad day. Even those of us who plod the ethereal attics of language, getting owl shit and faded pink insulation on our shoes, have bad days. I had coffee with a good friend this morning, and a nice meeting with friends this evening, but in between and afterwards… Ah, you don’t wanna know.

Look, people love me and I love them and sometimes life on its own terms — our crippled search for meaning and consolation — just resists all our best efforts to live it passively; it shudders and bucks under our feeble anesthesia. A bad day will not be ignored. And though the evil of the day is sufficient to itself, tomorrow, they all tell me, is another day. Whether the sun gonna rise and shine in my backdoor, or I’m goin’ out in the cold rain and snow, remains to be seen. So here’s a poem.

Conscientious Objector

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.

I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.

He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.

But I will not hold the bridle while he clinches the girth.

And he may mount by himself: I will not give him a leg up.

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip, I will not tell him which way the fox ran.

With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the black boy hides in the swamp.

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.

I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends nor of my enemies either.

Though he promise me much, I will not map him the route to any man’s door.

Am I a spy in the land of the living, that I should deliver men to Death?

Brother, the password and the plans of our city are safe with me; never through me

Shall you be overcome.

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

I’ve always been a fan of Peanuts. Linus once said to Charlie Brown, “I’m aware of my tongue. It’s an awful feeling! I can’t put it out of my mind.”

That’s the torture of consciousness in a nutshell, don’t you think?

Sartre & Peanuts: Nathan Radke claims that Charlie Brown is an existentialist.

On the matter of American hypocrisy in demanding other countries give up their nukes. (See this post by Erik on All That Arises.)

Back in the good old days of the cold war, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) was said to prevent seemingly sane world leaders from arrogantly shoving the planet over the precarious precipice of annihilation. But that was predicated on the hesitation of men to see their populations obliterated and the world destroyed. With the rise of people like Kim Jung Il, we can’t count on that anymore. Would he start a nuclear war because he’s having a bad hair day? Who knows.

Can you see why a man like Bush, with all the statesmanship of a longhorn steer, has such a fear of WMD? There’s no MAD, only madmen. In the new world, the only tolerable number of nations with WMD is one. Hypocritical, coming from the only nation ever to use nukes on people? Sure. But somehow, sickeningly rational.

So there we were, driving along, my folks and I. We’d just left the nursing home where my Grandma is, and my brother and his family had left for home in the far and frigid north as well. You know it’s always hard when family visits end. It’s sad to say goodbye, and we were driving along in need of something cheerful.

I was watching a wall as we passed it, a light brown block and stucco wall, seven or eight feet high, which separated the road from the backs of a row of homes. Suddenly there he was, his head and shoulders above the wall, his paws resting on it as though it were the most natural thing. Dogs always peer over the tops of eight-foot walls. And he was just looking around casually, his big black head turning side to side, watching the cars. I believe he was a Rottweiler.

He must have been standing on something. And the best thing that came to mind at that moment was … two or three other dogs. Sometimes, you just have to see what’s on the other side of your problems, and it helps to have friends.