I am done reading the news for a while. It clouds my reality. It is Karl Rove. And other people behaving badly. It is drought or torrent. Pain and judgement. Religious absolute-ism. Bounced checks in the morality accounts.

But I'm sure it'll be better news by Saturday - I'll probably start reading again then.

Trouble. Tail chasing, TV barking, pants licking, hole digging, cat poop eating, trouble. (click pic) 

She won't even look at me...the shame. Sensing my building wrath, Jazz-tard disappears... (click pic) 

Makin the Break

I have the Red Dog. She is 75 pounds of rippling, loving, fearsome, doggy dependency. She is all dog. None of this, "she thinks she's a human!" cutesy crap for Red. She's a dog. She chases squirrels and cats and really anything that's not on two feet. Trucks, bicyclists, gnus. She wants them all.

Red becomes anxious when I leave. She has serious separation issues, and if you knew her history, you'd understand. But she takes it out by emptying the garbage. Or stealing things off the counter and burying them. Box of Triscuits, cheese wrapper, banana. Whatever. If it's got food origin, she'll either bury it, or she'll take it into the living room and leave it for me to find when I get home.

I get the message.

Last week I found my biggest, sharpest kitchen knife (Santoku blade, granton edge) just inside the front door. I could easily have stubbed my toe on it. It had residue from something I'd been cutting. She pulled it off the counter and carried it to the front door and left it for me. I would be anthropomorphizing if I imbued the act with more symbolism than I think she intended. I don't think she got the fact that it was a ten inch long knife. Really I don't. It just had the residue of food on it.

Jazz the Dingo is staying with us right now. Jazz and Red met last year, 12 weeks after Jazz emerged from the womb. Red has been the female influence in Jazzy's life. She's taught her most everything she knows. Except for a few special interests Jazz has (mad-cow-like tail chasing: Red has no tail. Barking at animals on the television: Red seems blind to the radiation box.)

So Jazz is here for three weeks while Bill and Margo wander around Africa.

My sleep is broken. My pants are wet. My house is filthy.

Jazz leaps onto my bed at the first sign of light. 5, 5.30 a.m. Or if the neighbors turn on their bathroom light in the middle of the night. She just flies up and starts wagging. Food now! Let me lick you!

Yes, the licking. Licking many things. Any things. My pants are a big favorite. She slips under the desk and just starts sniffing and licking. I know it sounds all filthy-web-site-ish, but leave that thought behind please. She just finds good stuff on my pants and licks. And the carpet. The couch. Red's ears. The wall. Grass. Tires. But my pants are the most annoying target.

Another Red anger trait is digging. She stopped this some time ago, but the behavior has returned with Jazz. I understand she's got some jealousy going. But she's dug these two enormous holes in the back yard. There are two holes, because I put a rock the size of a cappibara in the first one. So they moved to another. She and Jazz just get into this zone, and they dig like wolverines. It's insane, totally obsessive. And it's a mess. They go outside for whatever it is dogs go outside for, they come back in, and it's muddy tracks across the kitchen, living room, office. Everywhere.

All I can make of the digging is that they're headin' for the fence. This is going to be their big break. But Jazz-tard must be the brains of the operation...they started in the middle of the yard. Why not get a little closer to the fence? Please?

Hunter T.'s gone. I'm okay.

I awoke to the news that Hunter S. Thompson had died. More to the point, that he killed himself. There was *way* too much hand-wringing and expression of deep loss on sites like Atrios. He went too young, perhaps, but I expected it in a drunken pickup truck excursion into a river in the mountains of Colorado long ago. At least this way he took his moment when he felt he had a reason to go.

I was influenced by HST like any 19 year old discovering freedom, drugs, and the infinite value of being able to tell people your own opinion. I had associates who fancied themselves "pretty fuckin gonzo" themselves, which is like the loner in high school fancying himself to be like Charles Bronson. They were deluding themselves, and sounding trite by even attempting any kind of personal comparison.

I didn't believe about half of what Thompson wrote. But even if half of it was true, he was way out of hand. Unfortunately, he was a belligerent drunken parody for most of the last 20 years as far as I can tell. I was worn out with him after about the age of 25. (My 25, not his.)

Hells Angels was a great book. It felt pretty honest, which Curse of Lono and Fear and Loathing didn't, really, to me. He got pretty sophomoric. But hey - I liked sophomoric when I was a sophomore. (And a junior.)

He was more of a moment, a movement, a social shift, than I think he ever was a great writer. He had flashes of brilliance, but bombast was his premise, and it became way too predictable.

I think shooting himself was as close as he ever got to Hemingway.

R.I.P.