Tag Archives: dogs

An Open Letter to My Neighbor with the Dogs

19 Jul
image stolen from dog.blog.abc101.com

image stolen from dog.blog.abc101.com

6:45AM

I am a nice person. You’ve seen me in the street. I have nodded warmly. If you then said “how are you,” I responded “great,” or some other polite lie. I am a nice person. I take care not to back up too close to your car on street cleaning day, even though spaces are tight. I once thanked you for planting rosemary and sage in your sidewalk median where I can easily access them in a pinch. They have flavored many chickens.

But here’s the thing with you: every morning I want to crucify you. And your son, the one with the stupid haircut, his oafish teenage smile and his stupid god damn baseball hat– I want to crucify the two of you. I want to do it in front of your dogs while they’re duct taped to a bench or something. Restrained in some way that they’re immobile but not so distracted by the pain of their bondage that they can’t pay attention to the tableau. Which is you, in agony, radius bones splintered with galvanized nails pounded through some scrap two by fours as I take one of those little torches they use for crème brulee to the most sensitive parts of your body. Continue reading →

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Diary: More on the Dogs

21 Jun

I threw a bucket of water on those dogs again this morning.  They were barking, or at least the one was.  They have been starting at 6:45 AM for several days.  Their bark volume is exactly high enough to still be audible over every fan in the house turned up to the maximum setting and placed in my bedroom, along with the loud guttural motor from the bathroom blower.  The next move is to turn on the AC on “fan” mode so no cold air is blowing from it.  In total this creates about the same amount of white noise as standing next to a jet engine.  And still,  still, you can hear the fucking dog: bark bark bark, bark bark bark.

So I got up this morning and filled a five gallon bucket with cold water and went to the bottom of my driveway and listened directionally so I could tell which of the 12,000 unruly dogs on my block was the one doing the barking.  I surmised that it was the border collie two houses down who either stands on his high porch bark bark barking or, if a person is walking by, runs down the stairs with his little white terrier friend and maniacally circles over and over again while bark bark barking and occasionally trying to bite through the gate.  I stood in front of his house; he and his buddy came down, and I dumped the water on them. Continue reading →

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Kenny Rogers, the Dog Part 3: Today is Kenny Day

5 Jun

Today is the day.  Today is the day that YOU adopt Kenny Rogers, the dog.  You, with your generous backyard and one or more persons on the premises at all times, with your adequate energy to get out to the park and toss the beast a tennis ball.  You who are not the kind of douchebag that has a steroidal pit bull struggling on a length of Home Depot chain so you can look like a badass in your powder blue track suit, but who does secretly relish that your totalitarian secret police dog could probably kick that dog’s ass.  You who has kids and/ or valuable possessions and is in need of a guard dog who looks really scary and mean but would probably just lick the intruders, but is effective as a deterrent because the sign that says “Warning: Attack Dog” has a picture of your actual dog on it.  Today is the day.  Today is the day you go to the East Valley Animal Shelter on Vanowen Avenue in Van Nuys and ask to check out an intact male  German Shepherd officially known as “Baby G.”  But that is his slave name.  His real name is of course Kenneth Donald “Kenny” Rogers, because he picked a fine time to leave his abusive former home.  Because he knew when to walk away, and knew when to run.  Because baby when you met him there was peace unknown; you set out to groom his burr-laden undercoat with a fine toothed comb.  Because don’t take your love to town.
Continue reading →

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Kenny Rogers, the Dog Part 2: Love Will Turn You Around

30 May

Some of you may remember from it being two inches below these words that we had a dog named Kenny Rogers, and were wrestling with whether to return him to a possibly neglectful home.

It’s now a bit out of our hands.  Kenny jumped the fence at Nikol’s house and wandered up to some woman who turned him in to the animal shelter.

In a way, this kicks ass, because both the phone numbers off his avid chip were disconnected (we did end up trying them).  The shelter can’t get a hold of his owner.  So for him to get the dog back, he would have to take action, meaning, he wants the dog and therefore gives a shit.  If he doesn’t give a shit, which seems more likely, the dog will go up for adoption on June 5th.
Continue reading →

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Kenny Rogers, the Dog

29 May

We found a dog in the park.  Me and Nikol, and this other girl.  Walking in the middle of Elysian Park on this long dirt road, we saw in the distance what looked like a gigantic coyote or a small bear stumbling drunkenly around, digging up shit, and eating sticks.  Getting closer it was just a huge German shepherd. Little beat up but a handsome beast, and with a collar on, so we figured some jerkoff would come jogging up the road behind his Gestapo enforcement dog that he’d let roam free in a public space frequented by small children.

But no.  No one came.  And getting a closer look at the dog he’d been fucked up by something.  Patches of fur falling off, walking funny, and the top half of both ears were missing.  Like he’d tangled with something that had bitten them off; they were just lumpy black skin scabbed over. Continue reading →

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Cats and Dogs

16 May

The people with their dogs. What if I had a dog. I like to think I would be out walking it all the time; it would have gotten me out more, and perhaps I would have net a nice young woman out with her dog. You know, out in the park, the dogs are frolicking, you get to talking… and then, you know, she comes over to your apartment, the dog recognizes her; she fucks you.  They say this kind of shit happens.

But really, my cat is the exact right amount of pet for my lifestyle.  He has his own life.  It would be immeasurably cruel to have a dog, go to work for eleven hours per day; sometimes do drinks after, you come home and the dog has been trapped in 400 square feet of poorly ventilated carpeted space with only the smells of garbage under the kitchen sink to amuse him. The dog’s whole life is waiting for the moment you get home. You get home and it’s just looking at you all expectantly, like, please focus one hundred per cent of your attention on me.  Please spend every waking second not otherwise occupied, throwing a tennis ball again and again. Continue reading →

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You Should Message Me If

10 Mar

You have to live in Echo Park.  Or at least not fucking Venice, I mean come on.  You can’t be an actress.  You can’t not smoke.  At least, you can’t be one of those girls who won’t even take a drag after three glasses of wine.  Because if you’re one of them, I know you’ll never fuck me.  You have to be better looking than me.  You have to be downright good looking, even though I am not that good looking.  I am in crazy shape though.  I don’t give a shit if you’re out of shape.  I’m not going to ask you to lift anything.

I don’t give a shit about your money, job or car.  But you may give a shit about my money, job and car.  I have no money, a shitty job, and my car is worth $800.  It’s primer colored, and the seat belt, windows, sunroof and A/C are all broken.  Or rather, the A/C works but only when it’s not hot.  And someone jacked my stereo.   And the car is older than you.  You have to be younger than my car.

I don’t care what you think of my cat but you can’t be allergic to cats.  I care about your relationship with your dog, meaning—shut the fuck up about your dog.  I like dogs but I don’t like you if you have too many pictures of your dog.  Believe me, the fucking thing is sick of being your boyfriend.  Stop putting up pictures of him. I will not be dating your dog. Unless I’m sure you’re good and passed out.

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Diary: The Dogs Bark

1 Feb

The stupid fucking barking dogs.  Incessantly, always barking.  They begin at about seven every morning.  Must be when they’re let out of the house.  They walk out the door and down the steps to the front gate and just stand there and bark without ever stopping even for one second.  Bark bark bark.  Bark bark bark.  And of course, there are fifteen other houses on the street with multiple loud, unruly dogs, who all join in a chorus of bark bark bark, bark bark bark.  But these two, this neurotic border collie mix and his little white terrier buddy– the smaller dog, as is often the case, seeming like the boss–  these two are the instigators.  These are the guys who will bark at anything, must bark at everything.  If you are in doubt about whether you should bark at something, you better bark at it.  Continue reading →

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