Hello? Is This Thing On?

Writing this, I wonder if anyone’s still reading. We both screwed off for a good long time. 15 days? eek. Have we ever done that before? I’m too lazy to scroll through the archive and check. But I think it’s pretty rare. So rare that Ann Adams, the sweet lady that she is, wondered if we were ok. Yep, we’re ok. We just got busy for different reasons, and the computer made a meal out of my last attempt at a post. There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to save the post as the computer freezes, rebooting the computer, seeing the file you saved, breathing a sigh of relief, then opening it, and all you see is c:\blog.txt. Nope, that wasn’t the post. So rather than writing that one again, I figured I’d do a random thoughts one to get me going. *hits save first.*

Something has been puzzling me for a while. I went to the store to get Trixie a tug toy. She ripped Babs’s old tug toy in half, and then gnawed the everloving hell out of one her puppy raisers gave her so the rubber was hanging off and revealing hard plastic. So I thought I’d better get one made out of rope or something. I went into this store, and the first few tug toys they showed me were stuffed animal-like things with springy legs. I didn’t want them because I thought she might get at the stuffing. But I especially didn’t want the one that looked like a chihuahua!

What is that? dog-devouring practice? “here, killer, have a tug Schitzu. It’ll get ya all nice and strong for the real ones.” Then they see the neighbour’s yappy little bichan frise and they think “Ooo! a tug toy that moves on its own!” and before you can say sit, Gurrgurrgurrgurr yipe! Yipe! Yipe! What in christ are the makers of toys thinking? Are they hoping for a lawsuit? I was lucky enough to find a tug toy that consisted of a rope with knots at each end. I’ve never heard of a living knotted rope, so I think I’m safe.

I must be really nuts because I had another weird dream about a random dog following Trixie and I home. This one was worse, though. Not only did it follow us home, it mauled Trixie so badly that it broke one of her legs. In the dream, I was with another girl and her dog, and we came upstairs and the dogs were playing. Suddenly, I thought the play got a little rough, so I came over, and found myself sandwiched by 3 dogs! Three? Um, uh-oh! Here we go again! Like in the other dream, I tried to pick up the phone, but they wouldn’t work. This time, every phone I tried to use, including my cell phone, yammered ads at me. Lucky for me, my parents showed up and took Trix and I to the vet, who yelled at me, demanding to know what took me so long to get there. This must be because Trixie got an eye and ear infection dealt with, the ear infection probably being caused by another dog licking her ears and me not getting them wiped out well enough. But man! Two dreams about random dogs following us home? Weird!

And in other dog news, news that I’m horribly behind on writing up here, Barbie has made it home from GDB with her own black lab named Rosamae. There’s a picture up on her blog if ya wanna see. And my final bit of doggy goodness, if you just can’t get enough guide dog school fun, *listens to a large groan from readers which is outdone by a cry of nooooo! from Steve*, Jessica is at GDB training with her woofer, Newmar. I’m sure you’d get used to calling him Newmar, but that sounds like an alien planet or a factory or something. Sorry, Jessica, he sounds like an awesome woofer, but the poor soul got quite the name. I’m sure he’s already grown to suit the name for you, though.

Ok, ok, enough dog things. Moving on to….the TV. I saw a couple of commercials that made me sit up and take notice. One was for a deodorant that provided…prescription-strength sweat-protection. What? People need prescriptions for this? How the hell much do they sweat? Maybe more people who ride the bus should get that.

And then there was a commercial for a truck that was supposed to be always ready for fun. It’s name was the Dodge Avenger. Yeah, because an avenger sounds like such a party animal. It sounds like something that would run you down when its driver was having a fit of road rage. Nothing should be called an avenger, unless it’s an army tank.

And what is with the commercial that seems to be only people singing the alphabet to a rock tune? Is it some kind of literacy thing? All I know is I’m walking around singing the new rocky alphabet. Thanks for the refresher. I didn’t need it, but thanks anyway.

Now that I can use a bunch of functions on my phone, I do things I never thought I’d end up doing, like, texting. I looked at people writing messages on their cell phones and thought, why don’t you just, er, call them? But I’ve realized that sometimes a text message is more efficient, in theory at least. But when you’re me, and take…forever..to..write…a…message, maybe the efficiency is gone. I now sort of understand why the silly codes you see everywhere were created. But I will not use them. Here I am looking for ways to capitalize letters and use real punctuation. The English language means too much to me to give in to the dark side!

The English language means a lot to me, and so does my ability to speak French, but apparently I’m losing it. The other day, I had the opportunity to speak French, I opened my mouth, and no sound came out. I ended up caving and speaking English. I felt so bad. Damn it I didn’t want to lose it, but it appears it’s slipping away!

And I think that’s about it for now. I will write more stuff, sooner than 15 days from now, hopefully.

You Left Your Dog Where?

I cannot even remotely understand this story. Here’s a short summary.

Guy, his wife and his guide dog go camping in a Wal-Mart parking lot (what the hell?).
Guy ties his guide dog to a tree.
guy and wife leave the next morning, each thinking the other had put the dog back in the camper (again, what the hell?).
Neither did.
guy is very lucky, because nice delivery man rescues dog.
Police reunite guy with dog.

How in christ do you forget your guide dog? How does that even work? I can understand losing your dog if the dog somehow runs out of your house when you’re answering the door. I can understand something terrible happening to the dog if you somehow lost control of him/her and he went out into the street. But this is just stupid! He’d had this dog for at least four years. After having your furry friend either near you or attached to you in some way, you just don’t forget him! It would be like leaving your kid at a gas station. I know it happens too, but in that case, what do we say? Wow, that’s stupid!

Hopefully I never end up leaving Trixie somewhere. If that happens by some bizarre chain of events, I’ll really have to eat my words. But until then, I’ll just shake my head and be glad that it ended ok.

For Stressed out Geeks Everywhere…

Wow. The USB gadgets keep getting weirder. This one reminds me of a toy I had when I was a kid. It was called the revenger, and people would attach it to their car’s dash. then when fellow drivers pissed them off, they could press one of 3 buttons and it made noises of a death ray, a machine gun or dropping bombs. So they could feel like they were obliterating the idiot driver who just cut them off in whatever way they saw fit.

Now, you can have a similar experience with the USB stress panic button!

It looks like some ordinary piece of technology, but if you flip up the lid, there’s a giant red button. Slam it, and either watch a simulated bomb explosion or pretend you’re punching your boss. And if you’re afraid you’ll get caught screwing around, it has something to quickly flash up on the screen that looks like a spreadsheet.

And these people want people to pay $17 U.S. for it. Wow.

Chris Benoit

Carin told me I should write something about the Chris Benoit situation. She’s right and I was planning on it, but even though you’re reading what I’ve come up with, I really have no idea what to say. I don’t even know what to think at this point. I’m reading what comes out just like everybody else is, and just like them, the more I hear, the more shocked, the more saddened, the more confused I become. It never crosses your mind that somebody you look up to, somebody you see as special to you in some way, somebody you’ve almost never heard a bad word spoken about could have done what it’s looking more and more like he did. I know it’s a strange thing to say, but of all the people in and around the wrestling business, there’s almost nobody I have a harder time picturing murdering his family and killing himself than Chris Benoit. It just doesn’t seem possible, and there are moments when I think about it and I half expect that any minute now I’m going to wake up and everything will be the way it was before. Unfortunately I know that’s not going to happen, and that as today moves on and becomes tomorrow and as tomorrow turns into next week, more details will emerge, and somehow everything will get even harder to comprehend than it already is.

None of us will ever truly know what went on in that house or what was going on in the minds of the people in it, and sadly, the only ones who will ever fully understand what happened this weekend can’t tell us now. But I think it’s pretty safe to say that even if they could, sense could never be made of it. Sense can never be made of something like this, no matter how much we may wish it could. Right now and likely forever, the only things that I’ll ever know for sure are that 3 people are dead, and that even though you can’t take his accomplishments away from him, the name Chris Benoit will likely never mean the same thing as it did just a few short hours ago.

Strange Dreams are Made of Trixie.

You can tell I spend a lot of time thinking about Trixie. Why? She’s in my dreams! She’s in a lot of my dreams in very ordinary ways, but there were two that were especially weird.

I had one dream that it was one of those times that Steve and I were off to visit his family. But in the dream, I decided to leave Trixie behind! I didn’t leave her with someone, I just left her in the apartment. Everyone was fine with this, until I got there, realized that we would be gone for days, and began panicking when I finally figured out that noone would be there to feed her, let her out to relieve, all that good stuff. Then, it was too late to go get her, so we were just going to hope for the best. And the dream was over, I woke up with a start, terrified that I had actually done this. Alrighty then. What does that mean? Does part of me think I would actually abandon Trixie? Weird.

Then I had another dream that made even less sense than the other one, although I can sort of see fragments of reality in it. I dreamed that I took Trixie out to play on the flexi-lead, and the lawn was full of dogs! Dogs everywhere! They were playing, romping, having a good time. So I let Trixie loose, and we all watched the fun. Then I brought Trixie back in, and every so often, when I’d call Trixie to me in the house, I’d think I saw another dog! One time, the dog that jumped at me was yellow, and we all know Trixie is black! Somehow, I’d brought Trixie in, but another dog had followed us, and noone had stopped the dog from coming in with us. I was trying to get this mystery dog to sit, and it would not sit at all. Trixie was not a fan of our stray and kept growling at him. This was not a good scene.

I picked up the phone to call our downstairs neighbour. My thought was she knows everyone in the building, she’d know who this dog belonged to and help me get it home. But the phone wasn’t working! Every time I’d pickit up, it would either buzz at me strangely or I’d be hearing someone else’s conversation.

Finally, I wrestled this big dog without a leash past a growling Trixie and into the elevator. We went down to my neighbour’s door, but she wasn’t home! I got back into the elevator, and ran straight into my boss! I wondered what the hell he was doing in the elevator, but wondered if he could help me with this dog. He went to look at the tags to figure out where the dog was supposed to go, but just as he was about to read it, the elevator opened, he said he had to get off here, but to go to the lobby and he’d be right there to help me. But he never showed up! So there I was, in the lobby of the building, fighting with this uncontrollable dog that wasn’t mine. All I kept thinking in the dream was, “Man I’m glad Trixie’s good at her obedience.”

Man, my brain is screwed up when I sleep. I wonder what other weird dreams it will cook up with Trixie in them.

No What Allowed?

Wow. It’s not very often that, while browsing apartment listings, you stop dead in your tracks and laugh for five minutes at a listing…after staring at it in bewilderment for another 2 minutes.

I’m trying to help a friend find an apartment, so I’m surfing around the newspaper’s classifieds section. I found one listing that said “no crocodiles allowed!”

Crocodiles?

Yes, in fact, it said c r o c o d i l e s.

This is the listing.

No Crocodiles Allowed!
Item#:  911076      
Rate:  
$1,150  /  month
(Fixed Price)      
Address:  120 Mansion St    
City, Province  Kitchener, ON       
National        
Bedrooms:  1    
Bathrooms:  1    
Square Feet:   615       
Quantity Available:  1    
Condition:  Unknown      
Date Available:  09 Jun 2007    
Posting Date:  09 Jun 2007    
Posting Expires:  09 Jul 2007      
Posting Last Modified:  09 Jun 2007 11:23:55 PST    
 
Seller: 
greatspace

    Description

Air Conditioning: Yes    
Building Age: 1 years 
Floor Size: 615 Square Feet    
Stories: 6 
Parking: 1  
You’ll love this beautiful upscale, almost new 1 bedroom condo. Quiet residential area, new building. Stainless appliances. Electricity extra. No smoking.
Shared roof terrace. Lots of light in this unit. 

Everything else looks normal, except the part about the crocs, which leads me to say, huh? What…who…why?! In the middle of a city, there is a one-bedroom apartment listed, and they actually had to tell people that crocodiles were not welcome. No dogs? Got it. No pets? Totally understand. But are these landlords saying that they’re finding it a common occurrence that tenants are keeping crocodiles in their apartments?

I’m so tempted to email these people and ask why they felt it necessary to tell prospective tenants that crocodiles were not allowed to live there. Perhaps a better question is, where are crocodiles allowed to live? I want to know, so I can avoid those buildings.

Speaking Of Running Gags

Here’s one from the You Named That Kid What? Files.

Pat and Sheena Wheaton said they decided to name their new baby “4real” shortly after having an ultrasound and being struck by the reality of his impending arrival.

“For most of us, when we try to figure out what our names mean, we have to look it up in a babies book and … there’s no direct link between the meaning and the name,” Pat Wheaton told TV One on Wednesday. “With this name, everyone knows what it means.”

But when the parents filed the name with New Zealand’s Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, they were told names beginning with a number were against the rules.

The government office has opened negotiations with the parents about the name under a policy that says all unusual names must be given case-by-case consideration.

“The name has not at this stage been rejected,” Registrar-General Brian Clarke said in a statement Thursday. “We are currently in discussions with the parents … to clarify the situation.”

Clarke said the rules are designed to prevent names that are “likely to cause offense to a reasonable person.” Satan and Adolf Hitler were proposed names that have been declined, he said.

If no compromise has been reached by July 9, the baby will be registered as “real,” officials say.

The full article is
here,
4Real.

A New Trend To Follow

I don’t know if anybody else has picked up on this or not, but I’ve been noticing something odd about the news lately. Over the last few weeks, there has been an unusually high number of stories dealing with people whose names somehow relate to the situation that caused them to make headlines in the first place.

First there was Christopher Woods, the guy who is suing the Boost Plus energy drink people for damages over a case of endless, well, uh, wood.

A few days later there was the story of Iowa woman Suzanne Marie Butts, who is facing charges and possible prison time for stealing toilet paper from a local courthouse.

And just yesterday I came across the story of an imprisoned murderer who was caught with an entire cell phone charger stuffed up his ass. His name? Tony Pile.

I know that things like this happen from time to time, but 3 cases in as many weeks is pretty weird so I thought I’d better mention it before somebody else scooped my observation. It would suck to spend so much time *coughcough*researching*coughcough* such an important topic and have it all be worth nothing in the end. And don’t worry, I’ll be sure to report on more of these as I find them or as people point them out to me, because this is so totally a ready made VC running gag.