Dog License to Kill

It’s that time of the year again. I need to pay for my dog’s license renewal. Some of the terminology in the license brochure is not very clear. For $14 the county auditor renews the license for one year. But the brochure does not clarify if this is a human year or dog year. I’m being picky, I know. Secondly, they list the rules for confining “vicious” dogs (“Dogs that without provocation have killed or caused serious injury to any person”). Frankly, it was a bit disturbing for me to learn that these killer dogs are apparently allowed to remain with their owners. Per the regulations these vicious dogs must be kept in a locked fenced yard, or a locked pen with proper signage, whatever that is (“BEWARE: THIS DOG HAS KILLED PEOPLE”?). The brochure notes that violations of the confinement regulations could result in fines and incarceration of up to 18 months. Of course the regulation does not specify who’s going to prison, the person or the dog. Or both. 18 months incarceration in dog years doesn’t seem very long to this citizen, in either case.  

Ms. Poppins' Penguin

Today is the 50^th anniversary of the debut of the Batman TV show. I loved that show, loved the music, loved the characters. You could tell they had fun making the show. And you had to love the bad guys. The Riddler. The Joker. The Penguin.  I would have loved to have been there when the writers were creating the bad guys. “OK. We’ve got a riddler and we've got a joker. I think we need a penguin.”  Those were my kind of writers. Yeah, they stole The Penguin’s flying umbrella transport concept from Mary Poppins, but that was brilliant. I mean, who thinks to steal from Mary Poppins for a Batman bad guy? I don’t think I could have come up with that. For what it’s worth, I think that’s why there was never a Mary Poppins sequel. The Penguin pretty much stole her thunder. Meanwhile, the Batman franchise is running strong after 50 years. 

Now that I think about it, I bet Julie Andrews wished she had a couple of those flying umbrellas in the Sound of Music when she was taking that family through the Alps in WWII. 

Cleanup in Aisle 4. And Aisle 7.

I took my dog into the pet store a while back for the first time. She’s wanted to go in especially to see the holiday displays. She sees the other dogs going in, and you don’t dare leave a dog alone in a car nowadays anyway. So we went in. Well, it didn’t go real well. I think overall she enjoyed it, but there are no rest rooms there for dogs apparently, and she had an accident in aisle 4 and another one in aisle 7. The bad part of it is that aisle 7 isn’t even a dog aisle. It’s the bird aisle. That had to mystify the poor clerk who had to clean up the mess. 

I told my wife about the experience when we got home and she thought I should have cleaned up the mess myself. As usual, I realized she was right. After that conversation I felt pretty bad (the dog did not care), so the next time I went to the pet store I explained what had happened two weeks earlier. I even found the same cashier. I apologized and also said that I wouldn’t let the dog run on his cashier conveyor belt anymore while I read the magazines. 

Sneeze Etiquette

There was a teacher in my elementary school that really yelled at you if you sneezed into your hand.  Turns out she was ahead of the times. Years later (a few years ago) there was a big emphasis in making an effort to no longer sneeze into your hand. Rather, we are now supposed to sneeze into our elbows or into the inside of our coats or turtlenecks or someplace. Anyplace but on our hands, apparently. I think this is all well and good, but it’s only half of the equation.  People are still getting sick.  The other half of the equation involves alerting the other, innocent people in the room about the upcoming sneeze. They need protection from the inevitable escaping germs that the sneezer does not block, as well as from the shock of the sneeze itself. In order to give them adequate preparation time, I have begun announcing my sneezes in advance when possible. You typically know a little while in advance when that sneeze is coming. A simple “I believe I’m going to sneeze in the next few seconds” gives the other people adequate time to vacate the room or at least cover their faces in their elbows to keep these germs out. People have come to me afterwards and thanked me. Others have not returned to the room.

  

Regardless, I think by the end of this year, sneeze announcing will be huge.  Let’s all have a healthy 2016 and let it begin with us.     

The Cosby Channel

We all have memories of knowing exactly where we were when something important happened. The Kennedy assassinations, the moon landing, 9/11, the Miracle on Ice, etc. I was eating with my son at a fine restaurant one day last week, and the whole time we were there the TV was devoted to the coverage of Bill Cosby being arrested and put in prison.  And our waitress was very opinionated about it and kept talking about it. I really don’t know much about Bill’s troubles and I really have not followed any of the proceedings short of what I read at the grocery store checkouts of course.  My fear though is that with all that coverage we were exposed to at the restaurant I’m now gonna remember where I was during the Cosby arrest.  Nothing against Bill, but I don’t think he ranks up there with any of the above events.  I don’t want to remember where I was for the Cosby arrest.

In hindsight, I should have had the waitress switch the TV to the Peach Bowl.  Nobody remembers where they were during the Peach Bowl. Even the people who went to the Peach Bowl don’t remember where they were during the Peach Bowl.

Sleep Study

As we enter into the new year, it is a time to look forward. What dreams do you have for the new year? Well, I’ve never been a fan of that song “To Dream the Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha. I’ve never seen the play. Maybe it’s really good. I missed the movie also. It’s probably better than Man from UNCLE. And maybe I’m taking this out of context, but how can a dream be impossible? Last time I looked, you can dream anything you want, anything imaginable. I mean, have you ever gone to work in the morning, and you’re standing around the water cooler, and you say, “Hey, I had the craziest dream last night. I was driving down the road and I picked up a hitch hiker and we like started talking and all of a sudden he turned into a walnut.” And then someone says, “Hey, you can’t have that dream! That’s an impossible dream!” No. Nobody ever says that. It’s possible to have any dream, I think. 

Have you ever woken up during a dream, and it was a good dream, and you tried to fall back to sleep and get back into the dream? Now that’s impossible, I think. Maybe that’s what this La Mancha Man was talking about.