State of the dogs

This particular fight was largely facilitated by continued hygiene problems with the dogs: everyone shitting and peeing where they're not supposed to. Snuggles and Princeton have ALWAYS had issues, and Fern (babykicker's dog) is nuts (most likely the result of abuse). But Radar wasn't just house trained, I took him to a handler for weeks and weeks of clicker training. Moving back home has been a disaster on that front. One of the babykicker's favorite excuses is that all the other dogs have issues so why is Fern's behavior an issue? (She pees and shits in other people's rooms) This tactic is particularly irksome, considering the effort I've put into Radar's house training. For the record, last night I tried to say, "look, all the dogs have accidents, no one is denying that, but Fern is doing X,Y, and Z. Just put her in a crate when you leave and you will reduce the number of accidents" Babykicker wouldn't hear it. She seemed to be obstinate about that fact....I'm sorry I just fantasized about caving her face in MMA style....she seemed to be obstinate just to be obstinate.

Now I will confess to this, I think I called her a miserable cunt a little while before I said that, I don't remember, so things were already bad and probably past the point of reason. But that's part of why I called her a miserable cunt in the first place. Frustration. She NEVER listens to reasons, rejects all criticism as a personal act (and will turn around say I can't take criticism)....sorry fantasized about choking her out....Yeah, this is bad.
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For example, she called me anorexic. Huh??? I eat all the time. She's the one with eating problems.

I'm sorry, this was supposed to be about the dogs, and I'm back to talking about her. The point I was moving towards is I think a lot of the dog issues may be acting out. This is their way of handling all the negative energy, loving them isn't enough. I have to get out of this house. I have to get Radar out of this house. Someone in this house is going to snap big time, I'd rather it not be me.

Radar got hosed, man!

My puppy dog has been on the short end of the stick this morning. He was stuck in the crate while I took my parents dogs to the vet for rabies shots. He was quite vocal in his protest. The injustice poured from his throat with all the eloquence of a fat man sitting on a set of bag pipes.

Afterwords, I came home, picked him up, and took all three dogs to the groomer's. I was informed that Petsmart policy stated that dogs had to wait 48 hrs after getting the rabies shots because blah blah blah, but since Radar was good to go I left him there: poor, poor puppy dog.

The puppy takes no prisoners

Poor Radar. A demon has crawled up his anus with the goal of turning his butt into an honest to God environmental disaster. He''s had--I believe the phrase is---the squirts most of the day, punctuated with a puke, about an hour ago. Radar barf is particularly troublesome, not because it's super chunky or hard to clean, just that it usually reminds me of the Orange Julius drinks I had as a child. A fuzzy childhood memory turned into dog vomit. Yum!

Poor guy even whined a little when he puked. This is the 2nd time in two weeks he's had tummy trouble. As far as I know he's only eating dog food....as far as I know.

Monday

The next body part to make my life a livin' hel is an oldie but goodie. My left pec has an achey/cramped sensation. As of now it's not impeding mobility but rotating my neck at odd angles seems to aggrivate it.

In order to blog one needs things to happen in life. I am in the midst of my own slowdown economic and otherwise. The job front is bleak, and I continue to apply to grad programs. I remain in that precarious holding pattern with my girlfriend. Radar is still a Scottish terrier. The criminals responsable for our rape and torture remain at large, closer to us in the echoes of a heartbeat than the physical world. My family is still crazy. My family is still crazy. My family is still crazy. And I am a leaky faucet of mucus.

The banality of evil is still alive and well.

Travelogue

Trip went alright. Radar met a new cat. There was whining, hissing, barking, careful steps, and a single lucky sniff.

Radar is a connoisseur of the cat butt. When Crookshanks was in range for the inhale it was like watching a foodie having a religious experience over a fine glass of Chateau blah blah frenchie blah.
Radar was Alton Brown at his most beatific. There was a to the bone reverence, a bright shiny smile for that feline anus.

There was minimal drama between me and girlfriend. I find it's usually my visits to her (as supposed to vice versa) that crying and shouting are likely to occur, but most theatrics were relegated to Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

My knees are voicing a little displeasure, but so far the consequences have been minimal.

Vacation

Beach was fun. Got to spend time with girlfriend. We made ice cream (Golden Oreo). We played Super Mario Galaxy, and yes, we even went to the beach, and we even went to the movies. (Wall-E is another Pixar homerun, filled with Kubrick homages, top notch animation, and that darn fine Pixar Wit. Despite this, Pixar makes what, for a "family film" is a deeply cynical vision of our future, but one with the ring of truth.) We got to be a normal couple for a while.

And Radar was a dog, spending his time in a way befitting a Scottish Terrier: barking at golfers. It was wrong and we wagged our fingers at him, but the filled me with impish pride.

In fact, by vitrue of shared heritage, Scottish Terriers should be the only living thing allowed to totally fuck up a game o' golf. If you screw up a shot or putt or whatever tough shit, you just got a scottish beatdown Radar style.

Think of the drama! You would never know when it would happen, only that it could.

"It's the eighteenth hole, Woods needs an eagle to win. He's about to--Oh! that scottie came out of nowhere!"
"Bob, the lil s.o.b was hiding IN the bag, he emerged from between the 8 and 9 Iron like some sort of demon"
"Ah, the ole Brown Sauce Voodoo , pioneered by that great warrior, Angus IV"
"It may be Brown Sauce Voodoo, but poor Tiger looks like he just received a big wet *Glascow Kiss!"
They laugh that snarky white laugh of the country club caucasian. I smile. You smile, and we all just grew a little bit as people. We've got the power to ward off Monday. Sports are back people, sports are back.

*headbutt, Radar has given me a few of those!

Just a bit of dialogue

Gave Radar a shower. "Why?" My mother asked. I said, "he smells like dookey." "Don't say that, say feces, you have a Master's degree in english" "Yes, and in my professional opinion this dog smells like dookey, not feces."

Further Meditations on Dogs (and humans)

In literature, movies, pop culture as a whole, there is a tradition I like to call the Anachronistic Man, or the man out of time. By out I don't mean "time's up!" rather the figure has existed outside the boundaries of time. Sometimes he ages; sometimes he doesn't. They are hapless time travellers.
Odysseus is the earliest example I can think of. Dragged into battle against his will, he spent ten years fighting the Trojan War and another Ten trying to get back home. In fact, at one point in the Odyssey, the isle of Ithaca is in sight when Poseidon blows him away, adding years to the trip. Rip Van Winkle goes to sleep a youngin' only to wake up an old man. Even though Philip J. Fry doesn't age, he wakes up a thousand years into the future. The hero of I Am Legend (the novella), stands at the very end of human civilization, hopelessly alone. They are living a kind of trauma, not like mine, but a trauma none the less: violent seperation from all they know, disorientation, culture shock.
In most cases the figures share a common episode. They are accompanied by or have an encounter with a dog. When Odysseus finally lands on the shores of his home, the first creature he meets is his dog, who has waited twenty years on a pile of shit and flies just to see his master one more time before he dies. It is heartbreaking, very rarely have I felt palpable anguish from any art form, and this is one of them. Reading the Odyssey for the first time, the scene brought me to tears. Desperate and lonely, the hero of I am Legend, tries and fails to save a dog. In the 20th century, a dog waits, and is still waiting, for a Philip J Fry who will never return (and this from a geeky screwball sci-fi comedy!).

Why does this pattern exist? Well, I'm glad I asked that rhetorical question!

I don't wish to lionize humanity's relationship with dogs, and I admit that the dog could be a symbol for ANY pet, could symbolize our relationships with the animal world as a whole not just canines. Still, I think the dog works in these stories because of something specific about our relationship to them. They wear their hearts on their sleeves, even stubborn rascals like my Scottish Terrier, who wears his postured indifference on his sleeve. A dog is lonely with his whole self, he does nothing half-way. When he suffers, he suffers completely. Maybe it is because we tamed them early in our history, but we see something of ourselves in dogs. They were with us before time mattered, so perhaps they are a reference point, a marker. Regardless, when they suffer, we see our own suffering. Their pain is our pain. We are spiritually linked.


(If there is an alternative symbol, it would be the horse. They are the only animal I can think of who shares a history analagous to that of the dog)

Meditation on my dog

I look at my dog and see the person that I am and the person I want to be. Radar is, in his quietest moments, looking at the world, looking through the world, above it, below it, yeah, he transcends it. He is alert, living not as a dog, but a frozen beam of light. He is magnetic, not merely larger than life, but larger than himself. Any martial artist worth his salt would envy this clarity. The Shaolin developed the five animal style of Kung Fu, incorporating the natural motions and rhythms of the animal kingdom into the postures, strikes, and blocks of the human world. When Radar stands on my brown aztec porch, the wind blowing in his brindle fur, I’m convinced within him lies the secret of a Terrier Kung Fu, the ability to harness charisma, presence, majesty, into its own martial style. The style itself, its practice, its execution, imbues the monk with an expanding sense of courage.
He survived that awful night just as we did. He barked before I opened the door. I brushed it off as his usual theatrics, and there was a moment I thought, inexplicably, about not opening that door. He should be dead. Men that vicious should have shot him or beaten him to death, but despite the noise he made Radar lives. In his canine memory is he haunted by that night? Does he ever feel an instinctual irrational pang for a thing greater than his IQ or is it gone, cleaned from his fur by a soft breeze? Does he know that his father sees him as a totem, a myth, an irascible die-hard?

OW!!!

Managed to trip over my dog and go pinkie toe first into a door, which for those keeping score is a sharp pain not an ache or itch. Was too busy screaming and clutching my foot on the floor to berate the dog, which wouldn't have mattered anyway.

Note on the balloon

It struggles valiantly. It remains floating in the air at half mast. The dog doesn't trust it.

Make the bad man stop

BBJ was nasty tonight. We spent most of practice doing drills where the man in the guard position couldn't use his hands, AND he had to keep an open guard. This drill is a great way to build endurance and make you stronger in the guard position...Too bad my left inner thigh told me to go fuck myself. On the very first drill I felt something...pop?...give?..I'm worried. If I'm lucky I merely pulled my groin, if I'm unlucky I tore it. SO naturally I had to tough it out and cycle through the drill as many times as Sifu ran it. I'm icing it now, and it ain't easy trying to ice your inner thigh without freezing your testicles.

When I came home there was glass all over the kitchen floor all the dogs were loose, and somebody peed on the side of my bed. Suffice to say I was nonplussed.

BTW A Sifu is like a Sensai. I think the difference is a sufi is a title for Kung Fu practitioners...at least I think that's what it correlates to.

Night Lights.

A few nights ago. I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep. I became scared. bam! out of nowhere. I don't even think any though triggered it. I couldn't sleep without a night light.
I'm living with my parents right now--it's a long story I'll go into it later--their marriage is strained. They sleep in different rooms. Some nights I don't feel comfortable unless I sleep in her room with three dogs.

I think about my girlfriend, wondering if I failed her. I've almost succeeded in convincing myself I haven't. We made it out alive. Most of the guilt I felt about the rape has subsided, but now I feel guilty for a different reason. I've experienced...hot flashes of rage..as if I was suddenly reach out and strangle her, screaming rabid vitriolic garble. I would never hurt her, but when I experience THAT I get a little scared, a little afraid.

When the bastards slip into the dark the only people you have left to hurt are the ones you love. And as the poetry gods would have it, your the only one around to prevent it. In other words, I have a conflict of interest.