Tiny dog: 1991 - 2006

I started this web site in 2001. It wasn't my first; that was the inexplicable Hall of Heads, circa 1999. I had no sort of domain name for that site back then, but in 2001 I was determined to stake a new claim in cyberspace. I wanted a URL, and a fresh start.

Choosing a domain name is sort of like getting a tattoo. It's got to mean something going forward. And yet it's like choosing a name for your child: all the good ones are taken. I thought long and hard about what to name a random web site full of high-strung diatribes, non sequitur art projects, and irrational, pointed opinions. I looked frantically around myself for inspiration. What sort of name embodies an unjustified and outsized sense of hubris, exuding, nay, yapping, from an entirely unreliable source?

Nora is a miniature pinscher. Or was; she died this morning. She came to us via a country girl named LaDonna, selling min pins in the paper in a scrubby country town in the Sacramento valley, I think it was called Lincoln, back in 1991. Not one of us who looked down upon that wriggling pound of cute that day had any way of knowing that we would be sharing the next 15 years with a pocket sized Pol Pot.

Once home, this tiny dog trotted around the house with a hackney gait, legs straight out in front of her like a fascist on the march. She began her campaign of terror without delay. She quickly taught my parents to trade her bits of American cheese for contraband Bic pens and Kleenex lifted from my mother's purse. She stole entire Subway sandwiches and sticks of butter, and wedged herself under couches to swallow them whole. She waged a war of yapping and indimidation upon the resident Siamese cat, that raged on until he was too old to hear her any more.

No one could resist her reign of ridiculousness. They came from miles around just to experience her patented greeting: coming toward you at a dead run, butting you with her chest, and snorting your hair up her nostrils as she yapped. It was impossible to withstand such a salutation without laughing; she got me every time. Lucky for Nora my parents overlooked her creative approaches to canine living, and carried her around lovingly, like a celebutante's chihuahua. Over the years they came to an understanding, my parents and Nora: we'll pretend you are a regular dog, if you keep making us laugh.

Yes, Nora was magnificently absurd, and we loved her very much. I imagine that she went to her grave hating feet, for she hated feet very much, as this video attests. We can only hope that in the afterlife, there are no feet, only old Siamese cats to harass, and purses full of pens and Kleenex, and sheets of American cheese scrolling down off toilet paper rolls. A min pin's paradise.

Goodbye, my dear pin. We will all laugh a little bit less without you around.