CSotD: Dog Days of Spring
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We’ll start off a Canine Cascade with Wumo (AMS), for no particular reason except that I just swapped out my Facebook pics, which I don’t do terribly often. It is a form of branding, after all: People see your pic before they read your name.
Which makes dog faces an excellent Facebook pic locally, since most of the people I know in three dimensions are from the park and we don’t know each other’s names half the time, but we know the dogs.
It’s like elementary school, where you’re known as “Jason’s dad” or “Kaitlyn’s mother” rather than by your own name. I’m “Suzi’s owner,” or, admittedly, “Suzi’s dad.”
And the confluence of first dates and computers always makes me think of a date I had through Match.com, back when I thought that might be a good idea.
She was a graphic artist whose pic looked really good, but, then again, she was a graphic artist, so there was potential for disappointment.
She did, indeed, look like her pic, but we managed to both be disappointed anyway.
Could be worse. Date someone from the dog park and, when you screw that up, not only are you disappointed but now you’ve got to find another place to walk the dog.
Now let’s leap from surrealism to hyperrealism with Dog Eat Doug (Creators). I had to check the date on this one because it felt like a throwback to the early days of the strip, but was, instead, just a delightful reminder that dogs and babies are a fantabulous combination.
And a chance to point out that, while Sophie has extensive dialogues with Lucy the Bulldog, and the two cats have insanely impossible adventures, Anderson has kept the relationship between Doug and Sophie pure, which is good because if Doug ever gains speech, the strip will have jumped the shark.
And anyone who has simultaneously had a dog and toddler in the house has had this particular experience. Over and over again.
Juxtaposition of the Dogs
(Mother Goose and Grimm – KFS)
“Cleanest part of the dog,” my father would say, mostly kidding, though I remember some odd belief that letting the dog lick your scrapes would clean them. Not my father’s belief, mind you, and nothing that made me think having the dog lick your hands was a substitute for washing up for dinner.
The issue of where the dog’s tongue was an hour ago seems a bit prissy, since it quickly becomes history.
Back when we were juggling babies and dogs, we gave up on fretting over germs and would cry “Boil the baby!” with a laugh as we swept one of them away from something appalling.
My new pup, who turned eight months old this week, is an affectionate kisser, but I’ve been wearing a goddam mask outside the house for nearly a year, and I’m not going to turn sensible caution into obsessive paranoia.
And wotthehell, I’ve dodged all sorts of potential diseases from being kissed.
I’ve always considered it a risk worth taking.
Cornered (AMS) seems silly but there are people who brush their dogs’ teeth regularly, though they don’t use their own toothbrushes to do it, or their own toothpaste.
There is dog toothpaste and dog toothbrushes, the latter being like a finger cot covered with what feels like the spiky side of Velcro, and I suppose if you start them young the dog will put up with it.
I’ve always kept an eye on my dogs’ dental health, but not that close an eye, for which I suspect they’ve been grateful. I sure have.
Sticking with the animal theme, today’s Half Full (AMS) got a laugh because, when I lived in Plattsburgh, NY, there was a McDonald’s on the shore of Lake Champlain, and they had all sorts of signs begging people not to feed the gulls french fries, without a whole lot of luck.
Though that challenge was dwarfed by the one facing the McDonald’s up in Champlain, when a troop of Japanese snow monkeys escaped from Parc Safari in Hemmingford, PQ, and found their way south across the border.
You think it’s hard to persuade people not to toss fries to seagulls in your parking lot, try putting a dozen monkeys on your roof.
Though I kind of suspected the McDonald’s didn’t mind a welcome upward surge in sales until they’d finally trapped and deported the last of the escapees.
On another topic entirely, this Buckets (AMS) reminds me of Abbie Hoffman talking about his first job out of college, selling (legal) drugs to doctors for a pharmaceutical company.
According to Abbie, he asked his boss, “Is this sh*t really good for people?” and the boss answered, “Well, it won’t kill them.”
But if you watch Daytime TV you see all sorts of ads for stuff that apparently might, and it’s getting to the point where I think we might see the return of the 60 second commercial, because the disclaimers are getting way longer than the claims.
And, finally, the checks are out, they say, which makes budget projections slightly more realistic than seen in this Mr. Boffo, but not all that much more.
The good news is that people who got their tax refunds by direct deposit are getting their relief checks pretty soon, but, since I’ve been paying, not receiving, I’ll get a check.
Some time. Probably.
I went back through my bank records and discovered that I got the first check a month after they were announced. I never got the second check, so it became a tax credit instead.
The odds that you’ll get a check are much better than the odds that you’ll win the lottery, certainly, but it still opens up the door to budget projections that take into account money that isn’t there yet and fantasies about what you’ll spend it on when it is.
I guess it’s okay to count these chickens before they hatch, as long as they hatch soon enough that you only count them once.
Now here’s your moment of zen, starring one of my favorite actors:
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