If You Were Wondering...

The press of business precluded my posting here on top of the other elsewheres (Running Air, my livejournal; Eat Our Brains, a group blog I'm doing with Steve Gould, Brad Denton, Maureen McHugh, Rory Harper, Morgan Locke and Caroline Spector; and Deep Genre, another group blog about writing, with cool writers too numerous to decently mention here) where my presence is expected..

Why have I abandoned you? I haven't in my heart; but I was getting more traffic and more feedback and conversation at Running Air, so I tend to be there. If you're looking for me and the further adventures of Sarcasm Girl, Younger Girl, and Emily the Felon Puppy (who is now large enough to be Emily the Felon Dog) that's the place to look.

100 Percent, Doc, still has the cooler title. That will have to suffice. The conversation continues over at madrobins.livejournal.com.

Thanks!

Mad

Felon Puppy

I was unaccountably sleepy this afternoon and had dozed off shortly before Sarcasm Girl took the Em-dog out for a drag. I woke when she returned, dashing up the stairs demanding to talk to me. "It's really important!" she said gravely. So I prised my eyes open and asked what the problem was.

Apparently, she took the dog down the street to the corner store so she could buy a Mocha Frappucino. On the way, Emily and SG fell into conversation with a couple of people at a table at one of the local coffee-and-breakfast joints. The couple were much taken with Emily's beauty and charm, and SG was much taken with their admiration of our dog, and no one noticed, until it was in her mouth and half-gobbled down, that the dog was eyeing one woman's grilled cheese sandwich.

Fortunately the people seemed to think this was charming, too. (You can get away with a lot when you're young and cute, I'll tell you). Sarcasm Girl, apparently under the impression that a grilled cheese sandwich might poison the dog, dragged her home forthwith to report to me. Since that time Emily has had an outing to the dog park where she ran her skinny butt off; she is now lying asleep by my side, alive-alive-o, but, it must be admitted, not as ravenous as she would ordinarily be at this hour.

Death is an Unfortunate Side Effect

It seems that a street festival in Texarkana was ruined by a rain of dead and dying pigeons. While one observer notes that the pigeons "dive bombed" the proceedings, I get the feeling they weren't attacking, merely dying. Apparently a nearby bank had hired an exterminator to take care of their pigeon problem, and the exterminator scattered poisoned corn on the roof of the bank. The company said "its goal with the treated corn was to sicken pigeons so they would leave the rooftop. Death was sometimes an unfortunate side effect." Especially if you're the pigeon.

"Hey, you know what, Jerry? I'm feeling a little sick--maybe it was that corn on the bank roof? I'm gonna knock off early and go home to the nest."

"Me too. Remind me never to order the corn there. I thought there was something wrong--got a funny taste in my mouth."

Super Hair

I live among frivolous beings. Hell, I'm one myself. Which is why this morning's post-shower-watch-the-dog-eat-breakfast conversation with my husband was all about Superman's hair. Or rather, why did Superman Returns (which I rather liked) and the 1970s movie get Clark Kent's hair so wrong? This was touched off by the repeated laments of our local movie critic, Mick LaSalle, who kept bitching about Kate Bosworth's hair in the movie. He thinks it's a wig, and he thinks it's ugly. I thought they dyed her hair, and I thought it looked like the untidy hair of a woman who's learned to dress herself well, but never took the time to worry about her hair. I'm much more concerned about what they did to poor Superman's head. It shouldn't be so hard: the 1950s TV serial managed the hair okay. On Lois and Clark they managed it also. So why, when Superman leaps over tall buildings to get to the big screen, do they plaster his hair unflatteringly to his head in a haircut that makes him stand out from every other living being in the film? Forget about "is Clark Kent Superman?" The real question people should be asking is "why does this Clark guy look like he's shellacked a fox fur and stuck it to his head?" Or perhaps, "where did he get that awful toupee, and wouldn't just shaving his head be more dignified?"

The Spouse, of course, had a brilliant notion: they should have used the hair as a talking point in the movie. Superman has to put tons of styling product on his hair to subdue the famous Super Spit Curl because he has super hair, see. So either it is a really bad, possibly homemade, toupee, or when he changes back from Superman to Clark Kent he has to redo the goop in his hair really fast.

The thing is, the guy is really Clark Kent: the people who raised him and gave him his values, are the Kansas farmers. Superman is just his job title. So if anyone should have the real haircut it should be Clark. Maybe the Super Spit Curl is part of the disguise.

Totally Emily

Here you see Emily in her favorite room (the kitchen) and in her favorite lounge-chair: my lap. Like many dalmatians, her true character doesn't show up in a photo. But she is awfully cute...

Dog Crazy

Or crazy dog.

We seem to be making progress on the housetraining thing; more hits outside than misses inside, as it were. How much this means is debatable--it may be that the Em-Dog (her rapper street name) has me half-trained. In the first 24 hours, perhaps aware that the metaphorical cellophane had only just come off, she was all sweetness and light. She's still breathtakingly sweet and fairly light--but she also has discovered her teeth and wants to bite and chew everything. Particularly clothes and the flesh under them. The current thinking is that you can yell loudly, as if hurt (as if? as if? Ow.) but don't push the dog away. Of course, if the dog has her teeth so deeply sunk into your pants that she's scraping your shins and poking holes in the denim, a certain amount of gentle disentanglement is required.

I've been walking her all over the local streets--mostly to tire her out, because she's a very high-energy creature. This has meant she has met many many people (and a few dogs). And I'm encountering the Dog Network, a thing of which I had heard but not met in person. So when Spouse left the house the other day, two people walked by and one turned and said "Aren't you Emily's person?" We have an identity!

Because the little dog had a small flea problem, we've dosed her with an all-in-one flea/tick/heartworm med which you are supposed to apply at the base of the neck, just above the shoulderblades. "Part the hair," the directions say. But how do you part hair on a dog with such short hair that it lies utterly flat? "Til you see the skin beneath?" The skin beneath glows under her white fur, but that fur is remarkably protective of the aforementioned skin. Ah, well. I did my best. And Emily is doing her best too, I'm sure.

Tentatively Emily

We went to the ASPCA to look at dogs today. One of them looked back. She's a 3 month old dalmatian mix, sweet, energetic, and friendly. We got signed up for "puppy manners" class, bought a crate and treats and a grooming brush. I got to hold her in the car, a bundle of quivering, licking warmth. She has peed on the floor once, and thus far seemed very uninterested in her dinner. It's going to be an adventure. Needless to say, Sarcasm Girl has eschewed sarcasm, and Younger Girl is almost as quivery as the dog in her joy.

She is tentatively named Emily RowRow Robins. But that, of course, could change.