So I've been thinking today about writing a diary. I feel like I should jump in the fray at least a few times a week to get a diary out there. I've written diaries before...like my three part (and counting) series about Will Pryor
here,
here, and
here
I've written diaries that were sad, like this one about Ann Richard's death, and I've written diaries that were pretty dumb, like this one about a great national shoepolish guerilla ad campaign that never grew legs.
Y'all should read these diaries, I think they're great! Actually - read those before you read this one, cause you might think I'm due for my Thorazine after you read this diary.
So I was thinking about all this, and I realized that I never wrote a diary about how my pets are better than George W. Bush.
First off, I think I need to introduce you to my pets. We have 6 now, the first 4 were my wife's pets from before I came to live with them. I've adopted them now. We don't have a court order from pet court, but I think there's some quasi-estoppel doctrine that applies here. For those of you who took the Texas Bar Exam last July, sorry if "adoption by estoppel" just threw you into tremors of fear.
Elroy
First up on the Pet Chain - is Elroy, or "Big E".
Elroy is a big dumb dog. He likes long walks on the beach and food. Lots of food. He drools a lot, which kinda makes him like George W. Bush. He's also loyal like George W. Bush, but not in that creepy "be loyal or lose your job" kind of way. Elroy has never been in a management position as far as I know, so I doubt he'd ever know the ins and outs of hiring or firing people anyway.
Elroy runs the animal kingdom in our house. Nothing happens without his approval. You continue to live but-for the grace of the big dumb drooling dog with the lovable expression.
You can tease Elroy by saying "where's momma"? It'll make him run to the front door window to look for momma. It's kinda sad to do this when momma is out of town because then he gets all excited about momma coming home. I stopped doing this "trick" for this reason. But if momma is right outside you damn well better believe there will be a "where's momma" in the cards.
Oh hey - before I forget, do you like that doghouse? My stepfather and I built it for Elroy. Elroy, however, wasn't consulted about that particular building endeavor and has totally rejected it. He won't sign off on the certificate of occupancy. Something about not finishing the punchlist or something about how the electrical sockets are a foot higher than code or some crap. He's a very particular dog.
Yes, the doghouse has our street address on it. Don't stalk me. Thank you.
Closing it up on Elroy - he also likes to fart a lot. In inappropriate situations. For some reason, we tolerate this. I guess we don't have much of a choice because he's a dog and all. Anyway, his farts really really really stink. I wish there was a "Gar-lique" for dog farts that George Kennedy would sell on TV. Elroy is kinda like George Bush in that way too. They both stink a lot.
Astro
Our next dog is Astro
Astro is old. Really really old. This makes him kinda like Barbara Bush, but he's not mean like she is. He does bark at minorities though...we're working on it, but with a white old curmudgeon it's kinda hard to get them to change their ways, you know? God, at least Astro isn't dropping the "N" word, or saying things like "Macacca". Then again, he's never spoken any words in English, so who knows what he's thinking up there.
Anyway, Astro came to live with my wife in 1994. He was fully grown when he showed up, meaning he was about 2 at the time. He used to be tough as nails. My wife's father actually threw rocks at him to get him to go away, but he kept coming back. So they kept him. Astro and my father-in-law are best friends now. Sometimes Astro thinks he'd like to throw rocks back at my father-in-law, but then he realizes again that he doesn't have thumbs. Or a decent overhand throwing motion.
Anyway - Astro is old now, we had to get a bunch of his teeth removed and he whines a lot about moving around. He also sometimes spontaneously falls down, which makes him remakably similar to the 43rd president. He still gets excited every now and then and spontaneously humps the air, but for the most part he just kinda lays around thinking "breathe in....okay, now exhale." We think he gives himself a high five in his little dog head every time he wakes up in the morning and realizes he's still alive.
We call Astro the "Sheriff" but not because he's involved in any kind of law enforcement. It's more of a pity thing, it makes him feel better about how old and crippled he is. Astro really is kinda like Roscoe from the Dukes of Hazzard. He means well, but he's too old and busted to ever catch them Duke boys.
I adopted Astro and Elroy. They're mine. Well...half mine, since Texas is a community property state, I own half. I don't know if that's the front half/back half or the port/starbord half... that's advanced community property law, and accordingly, outside my scope of knowing things.
Maggie
But then there's Maggie
Everybody say "AWWWW Maggie". This picture was taken when Maggie was itty bitty. She's now huge. I'll update later with newer pictures. Until then, here's an antecdotal story that will satisfy your burning curiosity about "how huge is that little dog now, Whiskey?"
Have you guys seen Jesus Camp yet? There's a scene where the children are being brainwashed about what "sin" is. They use a cute little lion as an example of how insidious sin starts out -- cute and cuddly. But then sin gets BIGGER and turns into a large lion that will eat you and strap a suicide bomb onto its chest.
Maggie keeps growing. She's kinda like sin now. I thank the good lord baby Jesus every day that she doesn't eat me in my sleep. I don't worry about the suicide vest though...she, like Astro, has no thumbs and she isn't anywhere close to knowing how to make bombs with the organic cleaners we keep in the house.
She's all bark and no bite. Remarkably like George W. Bush. She also likes to torture weaker animals who can't stand up for themselves. So they've got that in common. But she does it more out of curiosity.... she's still pretty young. Bush might also be doing it out of curiosity, like "I wonder what happens if you force feed a brown person for 5 months at a time". Maggie's not like that.
Anyway, Maggie is mine all mine. Well....half mine (see Community Property discussion supra). She's been with us for a year now and she's grown from the size of my hand to the size of me. We got her from a rescue shelter, seems some amazing asshole put that cute puppy out into the street. She weighs almost 85 pounds now. We don't really know what breed she is, so we asked our vet. Our vet, who is otherwise competent, said she was "Brown". Hahahahaha, Ms. Vet-lady! There is no breed called "Brown" -- I looked it up!
Maggie likes to chew on people and things. She has a sweet southern belle voice and she loves her mommie and daddy. She knows she's not allowed to sleep in the bed, so she waits until mom starts snoring (it's not my snoring, no sir-e-bob) and then she gently sneaks up into the bed. Well...gently is relative, she's 80 pounds and clumsy as George W. Bush after a couple whiskeys. Anyway, she sneaks up onto the bed and then lays her big dogass down in the one position that will guarantee that daddy will wake up with an aching back. She's like a doggie doorstop for sleeping human adults.
UPDATE - here's Maggie now
Maggie also likes to pee in the ocean. I don't know this for sure, but I bet she and President Bush are similar in this respect as well. It's strange if you've never seen a girl dog pee in the ocean. I don't get it. There's miles of beach in each direction, but she wades in until her pelvis is underwater and then cops a squat. I'd say she takes after her mother, but her mother uses a toilet, which I think is beyond Maggie's capabilities at this point in time.
These are our three dogs. We spend a lot of money on them. They eat a lot and through our constant spoiling, they know they'll never have to hunt their own food. They're a product of this "welfare system" of home government, where they just expect the government (mom and dad) to feed them and clean up their poop when they poop in the house. If you believe Rush, this makes them remarkably similar to Katrina evacuees, but that's just stupid because they're dogs. And they don't live in New Orleans. Duh.
The Cats
Now....on to our felines.
A little disclaimer. I don't love my cats as much as my dogs. There....I said it. I'm a horrible person who will soon learn that God is not a DOG (although that would make perfect sense given the matching letters) but rather a cat. God will be a cat and I'll be totally fucked for saying that I don't love my cats as much as my stupid dogs.
I love my cats, but come on - LOOK at my dogs... Yeah, you'd love them more too.
(no pics on the cats yet, I'll upload tonight).
Maddie
First cat is Maddie, not to be confused with Maggie. You really couldn't confuse Maddie with Maggie because (1) Maddie is a cat, and (2) Maggie is a dog.
Although there are some similarities. Maddie and Maggie are both females and they both lack tails. They also eat daddy out of his money.
Maddie is sweet and nice, but not a very big "people" cat. Unless she wants to be. She's very cat-like in that respect. Independent as all hell. She would make a bad Republican because she doesn't listen to anybody, much less follow a common dogma or belief.
Lizzie
Then there's Lizzie.
Lizzie is by far the prettiest cat, but Lizzie doesn't want anything to do with anybody unless they might bring her food. Lizzie is to humans as Republicans are to evangelical Christians. She'll ignore you and probably mock you behind your back until she needs something from you and then it's MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOWMEOW until you're like FINE - I'LL APPOINT JUDGES WHO WILL BAN ABORTION!!!!! SHUT THE FUCK UP! Except instead of banning abortion, she just wants you to feed her.
What am I up to now? Five? One more....
Hungry
Number Six - Hungry. Hungry is our newest cat, we got him last week.
The City of Dallas has a funny policy for recycling. You have to put everything in blue plastic bags. Well, a couple nights before the recycling was to go out, we had our blue plastic bags on the front porch. The next morning we found that one of the stray cats had torn into the bag and littered our porch with old dog food and cat food cans. It must have been a cat bum's delight -- like hitting the McDonalds dumpster on Freezer-cleanout night.
Anyway, I was heading out to my car and I saw a black mass of fur on the ground not moving. So I looked and the black mass of fur was a cat. The cat had a dog food can lodged on its head. Hard. So I grabbed the cat's head and pulled on the can. Nothin...just some cat cryin. So I twisted and coaxed that dog food can until it popped off that cat's head. The cat shook its head and ran off.
Funny right? Story over? Not quite.
TWO DAYS LATER that stupid mass of black fur did the same shit again! This time my wife went out to pull the can off the cat's head. She did. But this time she fed the cat, who ate like he'd never been fed before ever. I knew at that point that we had just acquired a new animal for our Fur Palace. Sure enough, kitty was there that night, and we've kept him ever since. We keep him outside though. We named him Hungry.
We used to think that Hungry ate A LOT - because every time we'd put food out for him, it would all be gone later and Hungry would still be Hungry. That was until this morning when I found two other no-good scrounging cats eating the food we put out for Hungry! They had collars and beer bellies and everything and were eating our Hungry cat's food! Where was Hungry? Freaking hiding...on his own back porch watching two bully cats eat his food. Bastard cats. Those two cats are like George W. Bush's crony friends. Eating the hungry people's food that they didn't pay for and don't need. KBR stands for Kitties Being Rude.
Back to the Diary Topic
How are my pets better than George W. Bush?
Don't know - you tell me. I'm totally biased as you can tell. I don't know of any leadership training my animals have ever had, but then again, I don't know that George W. Bush has ever exerted any kind of leadership role. I suppose that both my animals and George W. Bush typically do what they're told, but then that kinda makes me the Karl Rove of the house and I don't know how comfortable I am with that.
This is what happens when you're bored on a Friday and you desperately want to write a diary guaranteed to make the Recommended List.