It’s A Dog’s Life, Part Deux

P.T. Barnum famously said that “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Well, I guess I win the prize as the sucker born during MY minute.

Didn’t I JUST tell ya’ll last week that I wanted to rescue a puppy from a shelter? Didn’t I JUST say that?

I really intended to go through with my plan, too. Every day at lunch, I was hitting yet ANOTHER shelter, looking for a dog that I hoped would be a good fit for my family.

Didn’t I JUST say last week that the LAST fucking thing I wanted to do was to get a puppy from a pet store?

Well, apparently Friz had other ideas. She called me while I was at work on Friday, telling me that she was going to a very reputable and recommended pet store “just to look”. Then, she told me she was taking Mini-Me with her.

I knew then that I was done for.

No WAY was she taking my son to a puppy store and NOT coming home with one. No way.

And, I was right.

Meet Ozzy:

Ozzy is a 2 month old Shiba Inu puppy that is, without a doubt, the cutest damn animal that has ever walked the Earth. I came home from work Friday, to find the little guy already having the run of the house, and Mini-Me on Cloud 9 with glee.

How could I say no to that?

So, now I have a puppy that cost me slightly more than my first used car.

Anyway, as I already mentioned, my son has dubbed him Ozzy. I’m not sure why.

But now a new controversy has begun. Should we spell his name “Ozzie”, conjuring up wholesome, family thoughts of Ozzie and Harriet……..

Or, should we spell his name “Ozzy”, conjuring up thoughts of devil-worshipers and biting the heads off small animals?

My vote is for the devil worship.

Anyway, it’s only been 2 days so far, but I’ve already cleaned up more pee and poop than I ever did with Mini-Me. The pup is a sweetheart but he is constantly torturing our poor cat by assuming he is another stuffed animal and chasing his ass all over the house. Hopefully, we’ll be able to curb said behavior right fucking quick.

Because right now having dogs and cats sailing past me at breakneck speeds for hours on end is seriously putting a cramp in my nighttime routine of trying to get drunk on Peppermint Schnapps and falling asleep in front of the computer watching Midget porn.

Hey, you’ve got YOUR tricks to relax, and I’ve got mine….

It’s A Dog’s Life

I think I’m getting a dog.

The thing is, I really don’t WANT a dog.

I mean, I LOVE dogs. Love em. I generally love ALL animals.

It’s just that the IDEA of having to take care of a dog right now…. running to the pet store, the vet, cleaning up poop, the whole deal…… well, it kinda fills me with dread.

So WHY, you may ask, will I most likely be getting a dog ANYWAY, in spite of my misgivings?

Here’s my reason…..

For the past year now, Mini-Me has been DIEING for a dog. Literally every day, he asks me if I have changed my mind yet, and his little face is all crestfallen every time when I tell him “No” yet again.


He has sworn to me that he will take care of the dog all by himself. Now, I’m no sucker. I know that kids throughout the ages have made this same claim to parents over and over again, only to quickly lose interest in the poor animal, leaving the parents to inevitably take care of the darn pooch. But I really DO think he’ll make good on his claim. Last year for his birthday we got him gerbils (mostly because we didn’t want to get him a dog) and he promised me he would take care of them all by himself, and bless his little heart, not a day has gone by in the past year when he didn’t wake up for school, all bleary eyed and tired, yet the first thing he does every morning is feed and take care of those damn gerbils. He’s really impressed me with his dedication.

And he’s such a good boy, with such a big heart. It makes me happy when we visit other people who have a dog and see him barely able to contain himself while he runs around the backyard playing with the animal. And it stabs me right in the heart when he cries in the back seat of my car when we drive home and he has to say goodbye to the pup.

I’ve held out this long, but I am only human. I give. I give.

The question now is what to get him, and where to get it.

I could give a fig if I get a pedigree or a mutt. All I want is a nice friendly puppy that he can handle, and won’t kill my cat or rip my house to shreds.

In the end, I’ll probably get a dog from a shelter, because damn it all but that seems like the best thing to do. The problem I’m learning THERE is that getting a PUPPY from a shelter is not easy.

Option # 2 is to go to a breeder, but I have this aversion to spending $2,000 on a pet that I could otherwise spend on coke and hookers.

If you know where to look, $2,000 can buy you a LOT of hookers.

Option # 3 is to go to a pet store, which is not really an option at all. I’m all down with the “not supporting puppy mills” thing. I also don’t support Nazi’s. I think they had their chance and now they should just shut up and let some OTHER group try to take over the world. Fair’s fair.

What was I talking about again?

Oh yeah, puppies. Well, if anyone around these parts knows where I can get a good puppy to give it a good home, give me a yell.

And if anyone has some sick fetish and is REALLY into cleaning up puppy poop, well then this could be the beginnings of a BEAUTIFUL friendship!

Best. Reality. Show. Exit. Ever.

I don’t propose to be a smart man, but I DO know what I like.

And Gosh Darn it, I loves me some Reality TV.

Whether it be Survivor, Amazing Race, The Real World, or The Bad Girls Club, I can hang my head in shame and admit that I’m a fan.

That said, I don’t watch EVERY Reality show. There are TONS that I don’t watch, and even MORE that I have never even freaking HEARD OF.

The clip below falls into the latter category.

I have NO freaking clue what this show is called, or what it’s about. I can tell from the scrawl on the bottom that it’s on VH1, but other than that, I’m at a loss. Admittedly, I could have kept reading the comments to see if someone mentioned it, but after perusing through a dozen comments of “You’re Gay”, “No, YOU’RE Gay!”, and about 6 ads for Penis Pumps I realized that I really don’t care that much what this show is called after all.

All I can say is that watching this poor asshat getting kicked off Whatever-The-Hell-This-Is gets funnier and funnier every damn time I watch it.

I have no words. Behold……


I’m not sure what scares me more… the fact that he decided to try to pass off reciting Rocky Balboa as his exiting speech, or WHATEVER THE FUCK IT IS he decided to do right after that.


Oh, who am I kidding? It’s what he does after his speech that I just can’t look away from.

SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUCK?

I can only assume that he did that on a dare. Any other explanation would require him to be put in front of a firing squad immediately.

Anyway, I promise you all that when I finally get on Survivor, I will act much cooler than this.

Of course, I’m not getting voted off, so the point is moot anyway.

Garbage Is A Dirty Business

You might think that someone who looks as beautiful as I do would be EXTREMELY high maintenance, but I’m here to humbly report that just isn’t true.

On the contrary, I am about as easy going about the ‘little things’ as they come.

In fact, if YOU were the girl who hit the jackpot in the Lottery of Life and married me, you would feel so damn lucky to be alive, that every morning you would wake with a smile on your face, jump out of bed, and do a cartwheel to celebrate your incredible good fortune.

My point being is that I REALLY don’t demand a lot from the person I live with. I really don’t. Basically, as long as you don’t throw poo on the walls or try to cut off my wee-wee in my sleep, we’re good.

Oh, and there’s one other thing you’ll have to do for me…….

When you fill up one of the garbage pails in the kitchen, could you for Fuck’s sake please replace the pail with a new trash bag?

Because, I’m not a murdering type of man, but so help me, if I have my hands full ONE MORE TIME with something I need to throw away and slide open the cabinet in our kitchen that contains our garbage pail, only to discover AGAIN that the garbage bag is full, tied shut, AND JUST SITTING THERE, I do believe I am going to take an icepick to someone’s cranium.

It happens a few times a week, too. I open the cabinet, needing to throw something away, and find a full garbage bag just sitting there, mocking me.

Now call me crazy, but when I see that one of the pails are full, I take the garbage out of the pail, tie it off, and then PUT A NEW BAG IN THE PAIL TO NOT COMPLETELY FUCK OVER THE NEXT PERSON WHO NEEDS TO USE IT.

Look, I understand that sometimes the garbage is heavy, and she’s all girly-girl and I’m all bulging-biceps-manly-man, but just leaving it there really peeves me.

I think it really gets my goat because leaving the full trash bag there is just her way of leaving me a message. The message being, “Hey shithead… this garbage is full…. Be useful and take it outside for me!”

I GET that. I do. And I’m happy to do it. And you know what? I DO do it. Every damn time I open the garbage pail and see it’s full, I’m not one of those fucks who just cram whatever shit I had in my hands down into the bag, looking to magically create more space in there.

No, I take out the trash and replace the bag.

Like EVERYBODY should.

Because, I’m a caring, sensitive human being who cares about the garbage-creating needs of my fellow human beings. I’m not some cold, insensitive, trash-creating monstrosity sent here from the future to kill my mother ensuring I will have never been born so the Terminators from the Cyberdine Corporation can have dominion over the post-apocalyptic world of the future.

Wait, I think I got a little confused there at the end. Were we talking about robots taking over the world, or taking out the garbage?

Fuck, I knew I shouldn’t have fallen asleep drunk while watching that Schwarzenegger marathon last night……

Ten

Yeah, this is another 9/11 post.

I sat my butt down to write something yesterday, feeling that since I’m from NY I should at least say SOMETHING about it, and no matter what I jotted down, nothing I wrote really said what I wanted to say any better than what I wrote exactly 5 years ago, on the fifth anniversary.

So, here it is, with just a small edit here or there…..

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I used to work on the 90th floor of Tower 2 in the World Trade Center.

The time was 1994. It was about 6 months or so after the first failed attack on the towers.

I remember my mother at the time, freaking out about me going on that first interview, saying “That building isn’t safe! What if they decide to try and blow it up again?”

I carried her concerns with me as I went on the interview. Any reservations that I DID have, however, left me as soon as I walked inside the building.

For months after the '93 attack, the security inside the Trade Center was mind-numbing; Police, guard dogs, photo-ids, multiple drivers license checks, and all of this before I could even enter the first floor elevator!!

After the interview, I went home that night seeing any fears I had about working in that building washed away. It felt like Fort Knox to me. It felt like the safest building in the world.

Who could have known?

Who would ever consider that people would use commercial airliners as weapons and try to bring the towers down from the sky? Such an idea would have seemed unfathomable to me back then.

Remarkably, it still does.

What people not from the greater NY/Long Island area need to understand about the World Trade Center is just what a major hub of commerce and employment it was for us here. I am not exaggerating when I say that there is literally no one who lives in this area who hasn’t worked in the Trade Center, or knew someone who did.

We ALL know people who died in those buildings. All of us.

Simply put, for everyone here, the World Trade Center was a huge part of our lives.

Luckily for myself, I had moved on to other employment by the time the tragic events of 9/11 struck, but I have friends and family that were working there that day. I lost friends that day too. Everyone around here did.

My friend Scott Bart had just gotten married a few months before 9/11. He was young. He was happy. He had his whole life in front of him. He never made it out of that building that day. Sometimes I go to his company’s memorial website and just sit and stare as I try to grasp the extent of the insane, needless loss that all those names on those memorial web pages convey.

Such a staggering loss, and at the same time, just one story, among thousands.

I have a family member who worked on the 50th floor of Tower 1. After reaching the 10th floor during his evacuation, he decided to help a group of EMS workers that were heading back up to help the wounded. Upon reaching the 40th floor, he happened upon his ex-wife, also working in the trade center. She dragged him away from the EMS workers and told them that they would need to find someone else to help them.

The building began to fall as they finally reached the main lobby. They ran for their lives across the street, and into Battery Park. We didn’t hear from him until 3:00 P.M. that afternoon, by which time I had been sure he was dead.

He still won’t talk about what he saw that day, and I have learned to no longer ask.

I simply cannot believe it has been ten years since the place that had at one time been such a central part of my life came crashing down, changing the world forever.

It doesn’t feel like ten years.

And it shouldn’t. Not ever.

We should, each and every one of us, keep the memory of that day alive in our hearts and souls for whatever time we have left in this world. We should remember the horror of it, but also remember proudly that, throughout it all, that day helped bring out the absolute best in so many of us. It was a day that tested the mettle of many, and few were found lacking.

Say a prayer tonight for the children and families whose lives were forever shattered ten years ago today.

Bureaucracy In Action

First things first…. I’m Back!

After 7 days of living like the sexiest Amish dude EVER, I finally got my mother-humpin’ power back on late Saturday night. Seven days of not being able to do important stuff like pay my online bills, or look at midget porn! I swear I don’t know how I did it.

Anyway, as the Summer draws to a close, I finally decided to do something I’ve wanted to do for years.

No, it’s NOT to finally get my self-help book, “Men With Big Peens and How They Cope”, published. I still need to come up with a final chapter for THAT.

No, I have finally decided to get rid of our above-ground pool, and get a nice, honkin’ in-ground pool. I’m going the Full Monty with it, too. Salt water, solar heating system, spa jet bench…. The works.

So, I’ve begun the long (and costly) process to get this started.

The first step was trying to obtain the permits from the town. I filled out all the proper paperwork, and in 2 weeks time, I got a call from the town saying that I could come on down to pick up the permit.

This is the conversation that took place with Town Clerk Millie once I got there…..

Stud: Hi! I’m here to pick up my permit.

Millie: Ok, that will be $58.25.

Stud: Ok, here’s my credit card.

Millie: I’m sorry… we don’t take credit cards.

Stud: Really?

Millie: Really.

Stud: Well, I don’t have the cash on me.

Millie: I’m sorry sir, but you’ll have to come back when you have the money…..

So, at this point I’m already peeved off. I mean, C’mon…. what business doesn’t take credit cards in today’s world, besides prostitutes? And believe me, if you had SEEN Millie, you would be pretty darn sure that she was NO ONE’S prostitute….

Anyway, I walked outside, frustrated, when what do I spy in the lobby of the Town Hall?

An ATM!

You would think, for someone who probably has to give the “We don’t take credit” speech a gazillion fucking times a day, she might have thought to mention to me that THERE IS A MOTHER FUCKING ATM ABOUT 20 FEET AWAY!!!!

Anyway, I was just happy to be able to get the cash. I took out $60 and returned to my good friend Millie.

Stud: Hi! I’m back!

Millie: Great. That will be $58.25.

Stud: Here’s $60.

Millie: I’m sorry sir, but I can’t make change.

Stud: What?

Millie: We don’t make change…. It’s exact change only.

Stud: Are you fucking with me?

Millie: No sir. We don’t make change.

Stud: Ooooooook, then just keep the $1.75.

Millie: What?

Stud: Yeah, keep it. Buy yourself a new blouse for something.

Millie: Sir, I can’t do that.

Stud: Sure you can… it’ll be our secret.

Millie: I’m sorry sir, but I could get fired.

Stud: Not because of me, you won’t. I promise that I will take this scandal to my grave!

But no matter what I said, no matter HOW much charm I oozed on this old bat, she wouldn’t budge.

So, now I have to make ANOTHER trip there tomorrow to get my damn permit.


Anyone have a quarter?

Day 6 Under Siege

6 days so far without power.

6 mother fucking days.

I am about one day away from going completely feral…… sleeping outside in filth, eating rats and berries, and slinging my poo at passerbyes….

Honestly, I think I’ve handled this pretty damn spiffily so far, but now, after almost a week of this crap, I am seriously about to fucking lose my shit.

And let’s give a big FUCK YOU to L.I.P.A. (the Long Island Power Authority) who continue to show ineptitude day after day. On Wednesday, they told me to expect power back on before nightfall. We got zilch. On Thursday, they told me they were sending a team out at 8pm and that they would work all night until the problem was resolved and that I should expect power by the time I woke up.

Not only do I have the exact fucking OPPOSITE of ‘power’ right now, but I checked every few hours during the night and absolutely NO ONE came last night! When I called again this morning to complain, I was told that a crew DID come last night, but assessed that it was a “High Voltage Situation” and they weren’t prepared to deal with that, so they left.

What The Fuck????

Granted, I’m no electrician, but it would seem to me that ANY fucking time you’re dealing with power lines, it tends to be a fucking high fucking voltage fucking situation. Maybe it’s me.

Anyway, since sitting in the darkness before finally taking a sleeping pill and going to bed by 8:45 started growing old, I’ve spent the past few nights going to the movies. It was down to either staring at my watch and watch the hour hand move, or committing Sepaku.

Anyway, here are the movies I’ve seen:

Spy Kids 4 – With Aromavision! Seriously. They give you a piece of paper with 8 numbers on it, and during the movie they tell you to scratch a certain number and get the appropriate smell. It all smelled like the same crappy cologne to me, but Mini-Me couldn’t get enough of it. He laughed his little butt off during this movie, so I’d say this film was a hit.

Rise of The Planet Of the Apes – This was hands-down the best movie of the summer for me. A lot of critics have complained that the human performances were sub-par and dopey, and you know what, they’re right, but just like I fast forward all the crappy dialogue in Titanic to watch the awesome scenes of the ship sinking, when the apes start waging war this movie goes into hyper drive and kicks serious ass! I loved every minute.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark – Being a Huge fan since I was a kid of the original, I walked into this a tad skeptical, but in the end, even though they really fiddled with the premise from the original, I really liked this one, too. The story of a couple moving into an old mansion, only to discover that the basement has some sub-human dwellers, is really creepy. The original used to give me nightmares as a kid, and this one had enough scares for me to consider it a win as well.

Anyway, since there are no more movies out that I want to see, and in the past week I have consumed more Twizzlers than my body weight, I can only pray that this is fixed soon.