Dog Logic

"If you just glued the cat into my bowl, we could both save a lot of time." "What are you staring at? I lick myself there because I can."

Puns. Bad Ones...

OK. These are just ... bad. But puns are supposed to be bad. So, they're doing their job. These are from sillypuns.com... Did you hear about the optometrist who fell into a lens grinder and made a spectacle of himself? There were two ships. One had red paint, one had blue paint. They collided. At last report, the survivors were marooned. The other day I sent my girlfriend a huge pile of snow. I rang her up and asked, "Did you get my drift?" Where do you find giant snails? On the ends of giant's fingers. When I was in the supermarket I saw a man and a woman wrapped in a barcode. I asked, "Are you two an item?" A guy walks into the psychiatrist's office wearing only Glad Wrap shorts. The shrink says, "Well, I can clearly see you're nuts." I fired my masseuse today. She just rubbed me the wrong way. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused his dentist's Novocain during root canal work? He wanted to transcend dental medication. Show me where Stalin's buried and I'll show you a communist plot. When she told me I was average, she was just being mean. A guy walks into a bar with jumper cables. The bartender says, "You can come in, but don't start anything!" This duck walks into a bar and orders a beer. "Four bucks," says the bartender. "Put it on my bill." A dog with his leg wrapped in bandages hobbles into a saloon. He sidles up to the bar and announces: "I'm lookin' fer the man who shot my paw." A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says: "A beer please, and one for the road." A neutron walks into a bar. "I'd like a beer" he says. The bartender promptly serves up a beer. "How much will that be?" asks the neutron. "For you?" replies the bartender, "no charge." A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, "So, why the long face?" A skeleton walks into a bar and says, "Gimme a beer, and a mop." A termite walks into a bar and says, "Is the bar tender here?" Four fonts walk into a bar. The barman says "Get out! We don't want your type in here" Two peanuts walk into a bar. One was a salted.

Blaze and Leo. And cancer...

Leo (above) and Blaze (below) This is one of very few entries in this blog in which I'll use the first person "I." I have to talk about this, and it's the only way I can do it. I've just learned one of my dogs has cancer. But this is not, "Aw, hell, another dumb-ass guy whining about cancer story. Where's my Internet porn? What'd the stock market do today?" So stick with me for a minute. Besides, the story's not over. It may have a happy ending. Half-a-dozen years ago my ex-wife left me for another man. She married him and they started a family. After my ex-wife sneaked out of the house -- she emptied the bank account and took the car and... whatever -- after that, I went into what they call "clinical depression." I made about five bad decisions during this period that caused me to drink more vodka than half of Russia, stop eating, refinance my home at double the mortgage rate, lose my freelance job, declare bankruptcy, lose my house, get hospitalized for two days for anemia, and live as a homeless guy in a motel for a year. Oh, yeah. My dad died four months before they took my house, too. So, it was bad. Really bad.  In my mind, there really wasn't much reason to keep going. So, what kept me going? Blaze and Leo. Blaze (female) and Leo (male) are angels in the form of border collie dogs. They are probably responsible for saving my life. How did they do that? Well, I followed them. People said, "You're going to have to get rid of the dogs, you know." Sorry, but no. No way. I made my life decisions based on not giving up my dogs. I stopped all drinking. I moved into a motel that accepted dogs. My first couple of weeks in the motel, I was so weak from my anemia that I hardly had the energy to get out of bed. I ate only four of my first seven days there. Still, I walked the dogs three times a day. I gained my physical strength back. Soon, I ran my dogs around the motel parking lot once a day. As a continued to gain strength I reached out to people for help. Many people helped me and my border collies. After a year in the motel I moved in with a friend in another suburb. But he couldn't house Blaze and Leo. What to do? I was able to arrange for them to live temporarily in three foster homes, with families who loved dogs. I'm not going to use real names here, but the third home was "Barbara's." Barb did much more than take in Blaze and Leo. She helped me find a job in the same suburb, and moved me into an apartment that allows dogs. (She's an angel in human form, but the Barb and me story is another wonderful one I'll talk about another time.) I am in my suburban apartment typing this. I have a job. Blaze and Leo are lying comfortably on the floor as I write. But four days ago, Barb and I took Blaze to the vet to have a fatty tumor removed from her left front leg. No big deal. In and out with a bandage and stitches. But they found cancer in that god damned tumor! The vet was not able to get all the cancer out during the surgery. I've just learned this today. Blaze and Leo are two dogs, younger than 10 years old, but after ...  1.) Helping me recover from illness and, ultimately, homelessness, and 2.) Being perfect animal companions who have brought love everywhere they have been to many people... Give me the frigging cancer! Blaze does not deserve this. She embodies nothing but goodness. But she has been chosen to suffer. Or maybe not... Blaze is a candidate for maybe another operation, or maybe radiation treatment, or maybe amputation. Yes, amputation. All I can do is continue to love them and care for them. I will update you when I learn more. P.S. How can an agnostic like me talk about angels so freely? Because my agnosticism is not like the word as it is defined in the dictionary. I allow myself to constantly search for what I believe to be "The Truth." My self-directed form of agnosticism has allowed me to see and experience miraculous things in nature and in life, as well as things that are horrible -- almost beyond what is tolerable. I choose the term "angel" for Blaze, Leo and Barb because it is the word that best describes them.

Buzzwhack.com's 10 words or phrases you should avoid using in a memo or news release...

1. Leading: Virtually every news release claims its company is the leading (put your company's specialty here) in the country. It's not believable anymore. Related words to leave out: Leading edge, bleeding edge, best in class, and Best of Breed (unless you're in the dog business). 2. Collaborative partnerships: Are we supposed to be amazed? Can you actually have a partnership that isn't collaborative? 3. Leveraging our assets: Any company that doesn't "leverage its assets" goes out of business. Everyone already assumes you do. Don't waste their time repeating it. 4. Mission critical: Your product may save us time, reduce errors, solve problems or increase profits, but unless lives are at stake, don't expect the vast majority of people to buy this hype. 5. Robust: It's a term that best describes coffee. Calling a product robust tells the customer little or nothing. Robustness, a new variation, is even worse. Try spelling out the benefits. It's more effective. 6. Ultimate experience: For most of us, the "ultimate experience" isn't something that you can put in a press release or publish in a newspaper, much less put in a memo to the boss. 7. Strategic alliances: Why would you have a business alliance that wasn't strategic? 8. Actionable: Everyone's tired of actionable steps, actionable results, actionable techniques, etc. Avoid the term unless you have to differentiate those items from the inactionable items you're promoting. 9. Web-enabled: If you have a Web site and take orders online, just say so. You wouldn't brag about being telephone-enabled or stapler-enabled, would you? 10. Space: As in "We're in the B2B space." Or B2C space, B2G space, etc.

Things Your Three Year-Old Child Will Never Say

-"Can I borrow the keys? I'm gonna drive up to the store and get some beer." -"This economy is killing my investment portfolio." -"I have to do my laundry tonight." -"This spreadsheet is a mess." -"Yes, um, I'm calling to make a colonoscopy appointment." -"So I arrived at the party, and the first person I saw was Amanda. Guess what? She was wearing the exact dress I had on." -"In a minute honey. The game's almost over." -"That's usually one of my favorite operas, but the tenor was way out of tune tonight."

Another sign that times are getting tougher...

Sometimes...

...You've gotta take things into your own hands.

'George Bush Attempts Friendly Bipartisan Gesture; Pinches House Speaker Nancy Pelosi In the Ass'

Words That Have To Go

Please stop saying, "It's all good," after telling us about something terrible that has just happened to you. It's NOT all good. We can't take it any more!!!

'Man Congratulates Overweight Co-worker on Her Pregnancy'

oops

Have you ever been Plutoed?

Just ran across buzzwhack.com -- a breath-of-fresh-air site dedicated to the misuse and ruination of the English language, particularly in the workplace. Here's a buzzwhack.com Top 13 list of favorite words and phrases overheard and used on the job... 1. blamestorming:  A group process where participants analyze a failed project and look for scapegoats other than themselves. 2. Death by Tweakage:  When a product or project fails due to unnecessary tinkering or too many last-minute revisions. 3. BMWs:  Bitchers, Moaners and Whiners. 4. clockroaches:  Employees who spend most of their day watching the clock - instead of doing their jobs 5. Plutoed:  To be unceremoniously dumped or relegated to a lower position without an adequate reason or explanation. 6. prairie dogging:  A modern office phenomenon. Occurs when workers simultaneously pop their heads up out of their cubicles to see what's going on. 7. carbon-based error:  Error caused by a human, not a computer (which we assume would be a silicon-based error). 8. menoporsche:  Male menopause. Symptoms include a sudden lack of energy, crankiness and the overpowering urge to buy a Porsche. 9. adminisphere:  The upper levels of management where big, impractical, and counterproductive decisions are made. 10. deja poo:  The feeling that you've stepped in this bull before. 11. bobbleheading:  The mass nod of agreement by participants in a meeting to comments made by the boss even though most have no idea what he/she just said. 12. ringtone rage:  The violent response by cube mates after hearing your annoying cell phone ringtone for the 15th time. 13. muffin top:  The unsightly roll of flesh that spills over the waist of a pair of too-tight pants.

Did you know...

If you unscrew your belly button, your butt will fall off.