Dogging It

When I was young, kids had dogs and adults had kids. That was it. 
Now adults have dogs and kids are way too busy for a dog.

Back then, kids had big dogs to protect them (the parents said) and to keep them busy when they were out prowling around together. Moms liked kids to go out and play (and get out of their hair). Dogs knew how to play.

Now dogs have shrunk. They could not protect themselves from a flea. And they do not play, they go berserk. (At least the chihuahuas and their little poofy dog buddies do.)

•  There were no dog clothes (OK, my sister used doll clothes on one once).
•  There were no little poofy dogs--this breed seems to result from twenty-somethings living in apartments alone or at least without kids).
•  There were massive dog lickings (on kids faces) but no smoochie dog kisses from adults.
•  There were table scraps and dogs survived, not fancy brands that cost more than steak.
•  There were food drives for the poor kids, not for orphaned dogs
•  Dogs were animals. And they just died when they got old. No one knew why. The vet had antibiotics, maybe for a dogfight wound and that was about it. No surgery, just doggie bye byes when they got old age sick.

I am having trouble adapting to this new dog world where dogs soon will get the right to vote. So I must change, or they might cut my Social Security and give it out in dog chow stamps. 

Welcome woofers big and mostly small. Let’s be friends.

Oh my god-time for the subjunctive has come!

What follows has some hard-core grammar in it. You may not want to show it to children under 13.

When you speak English, you get stuck with facts. We Englishers speak in (what grammarians call) the indicative mode almost all the time (in fact, I am right now). Indicative is for talking about “objective facts.” We don’t do much of anything else in English. We fact, fact, fact, constantly suffering from indicative fact disease even when, in truth, we lie our butts off.

Listen to FoxTV. You get continuous indicative objective facts piled way too high.  And how much truth is in this pile? Not much.  But it is all indicative as hell!

English grammar shows that objective facts need not be be true. Anything can be true if you say it in indicative-heavy English: your kid can be student of the month, we can be number one, you can get rich with that limp idea of yours. It’s not your fault you think you are going to make it when you have the brains of a road-kill possum , the emotional control of a meth-addict Chihuahua and the cluelessness of FoxTV watcher. English grammar did it to you.

We need to put subjunctive into English.

Then we can tell true facts from the faith-based ones.

In Spanish they mark verbs in doubtful sentences by putting them in the subjunctive. Technically it is not hard to do. Flip-floping the verb tells you the listener that something is not right with what you hear. If a verb normally ends with an A then they flip it to an E, and if it normally ends with an E then they flop it into an A. Hear it flipped or hear it flopped- beware: doubt, emotion and lies follow.

You can’t flip flop English because we have too many ways to end our verbs. Spanish only has three.

So we need some other language tricks. I think we need to look a bit farther to find our truth markers when we talk. Some languages use prefixes. I say lets just put a big warning sign in the front of every sentence that is shaky. What can we put there?

Since everyone born since 1990 already says OMG to start every other sentence, maybe we can co-opt the useless God phrase and make it mean something. My rule: If you OMG, then you lie or doubt, if you don’t , you are a straight arrow (as we used to say when people were honest all the time )

I think that is the answer. OMG I have figured it all out and OMG no more unmarked lies, especially from OMG teen girls. 

True Love

Something is happening.

Dogs are everywhere. Yap dogs lie in fat driver laps, big labs lick children like ice cream cones, fat-headed bull-toad terriers strut beside their fat-jowled owners and, worst of all, Chihuahuas in pink dog coats and, sometimes, little tutus tip-tip-tip across the living room of otherwise reasonable people.

The days of the free-range, doofus dog are over. Pluto doesn’t stumble into Mickey’s room and tangle in the electric cord any more. Goofy doesn’t yee-haw like an off-the-farm yokel. Dogs are the new fluffy handbag, the complement to strappy heels, the companion to a big guy’s bad-ass belt buckle. Accessories are everywhere and they breath and bark, or at least yip-yip-yip.

What happened? We are urbans. We don’t range the woods with shotguns and covered wagons any more. We don’t need a dog to fight off coyotes and rattlesnakes. We don’t need a ratty, burr-covered, mangy outdoors assistant. But we do need to look good as we walk down the hot city streets and, most important, bright-lit mall hangouts for teens and other layabouts. What could be better than a sharp-looking dog to highlight your new pink hair or that nasty tattoo!

But why dogs? They need care. They are messy. They chew expensive shoes and sofas. They plop droppings everywhere that we dutifully bag as we never would for humans. Dogs are kind of stupid—OK, they are stupid. And you are stuck with the same dog-look for a long time. You can’t get a new model each season without dealing with big disposal problems. The business opportunity looks like Rent-a-Dog, but people don’t change dogs. They love their dogs forever and I know why. Their dogs love them. Pure sloppy, undeserved, unconditional, lip-kissing love. You know your dog would die for you. Your dog lives for you to come home. Your dog wants to be part of you. True love.

We want an accessory that loves. That’s it. Love-doggies are what's happening.

This makes me wonder. Why can’t everything love me, not just my clothing accessories. I want my car to at least like me, to be happy when I sit in it, to feel the glee when I go fast around those hairpin turns. To hug me hard when I have to leave her in a parking lot and fly away for the week.

Or why not my house? It just sits there now and doesn’t say a word. It isn’t happy when I come home. I don’t want house slobber on me, but a smile would be nice.

The good news is love-stuff is just around the corner. I am calling on those genetic engineers to work hard on this one. A couple million neurons is all it takes. And there is lots of room in the attic or glove compartment for lots of love in all my stuff.

Some people say we don’t care about people anymore because we get our love from our pets. That’s hogwash. I love people. They just don’t love me as much as my new TV that knows my channels and plays them for me whenever I want. Or my new bed that has my number. Love stuff is the future. Get ready.

Little Green Men (and Women)

I have been thinking about genetic engineering. A lot of those engineers just work on one problem—All our foods are weeds. At least to their weed-killer sprays. So the engineers are taking the weediness out of our beans and corn and other veggies. That sounds like a good idea. Don’t kill our food along with the dandylions and crabgrass.

Some people call these engineered plants-- Frank’n beans. Named after an early scientist who also rearranged parts of one species. We should remember that this guy Frankenstein was a big success in his science; he just failed in human resource management. He hired poor help. It was the help who stuffed in the bad parts (stolen from the criminally insane).

I hear the engineers today are pretty successful with their weed work. But I have news for them. They are working on the wrong side of the problem: working on supply and we need to work on demand. You can only grow so much and then that’s it. But you can always shrink demand. That’s a green solution.

Some people tell me that there are too many people and we need to cut some out. But that leads to the “who gets to stay” question and then wars and concentration camps and other bad things. So forget the whole idea of cutting out anyone! Everyone gets to stay and make all the babies they want.

The solution to really shrink demand is to let the engineers make people smaller.

What is with bigness anyway? I bumped my head again this morning; I don’t fit in airplanes; and I have to shop in expensive big and tall stores (I am both). Bigger is not better. Remember that.

I have watched my wife many years now. She is only 10 percent shorter. But she eats about half of what I do. If we made everybody ten percent shorter every generation, then we halve the demand every 30 years. Voilà.

There are other good side effects. Like taking up less space. Every car is a limo. Every airplane seat is first-class. Every Macdonald burger really is a meal. And your little house is really your castle, or maybe, with a few modifications, an apartment block.

And you are always bigger than your kids. Every parent knows that this is a good idea. They get bigger than you when they are teenagers and this leads to all kinds of problems. Enough said there.

There are some things to work out. Like pets. We could just only have Chihuahuas, but they are nasty, little creatures. We need a new, foot-long dog, maybe an irish setter or a golden retriever. And those genetic engineers could make them vegetarians while they are at it.

The only question is: how small can you make people until they start getting stupid? We know that amoebas are dumb, but little cats are pretty smart. And I know lots of really smart short people so I am not worried for four or five generations.

The big problem is PR. We need to change the image of the small. The new message is: they are cuddly, they don’t cost much, and they are really green.