The tiny-dog gallery of corporate notebook drawings that make no sense

I have just discovered that Blogger handles HTML tables about as well as you handled the news that the love of your life was dumping you without provocation in X grade (remember how you cried?), and thus I was unable to post the tiny-dog gallery of corporate notebook drawings that make no sense in-line, and you will have to follow that link to see it.

Tragically, Blogger pukes like a cat who ate an 82-yard skein of rug-weight yarn when presented with anything more nuanced than nattering, run-on text paragraphs spewed by aerosol-huffing tweens in Bakersfield.

I am mostly sure that didn't make sense. Moving on.

Lately I have lost all ability to comment verbally on matters of any kind, and have devolved into primitive notebook scrawls when my mind inches around in my cranial cavity like a gummi worm during late-afternoon corporate meeting situations. I have tried to revisit these scrawls and apply some sort of context to them for you in the notebook drawing gallery. It is the best I can do in the way of an update to tiny dog.

I hope you understand.

Tomkitten!

Just to augment yesterday's post:

Tiny dog (an erstwhile closet Dawson's Creek fan and lifelong loather of Tom Cruise) would like to welcome Tomkitten to the public eye.

May Kirstie Ally, Beck, and Lisa Marie Presley swaddle her in their transcendent teachings of wisdom and prudence.

Oh, and, just a guess, but doubting tomkitten has a navel. Think about it.

This just in

It just occurred to me that the top four news stories in America as of today are as follows:

• Cannibal cooking utensils


• Tomkat: silent birth?


• Frat-rapist e-mails


• American Idol recap

The top. Four. News. Stories. Well, this is a rather small and minor country in which few things of note ever happen, particularly of political significance, and so this should not surprise any of us.

In other and equally relevant news, I continue to wonder whether cats have navels although random question and answer guys on the internet seem to think they have the answer, "yes," all locked up based on some mammalian generalities from their 10th grade biology classes. But no one has ever seen a cat navel. Trust me. I am currently sitting 10 feet from a sleeping cat, and yet I have no idea whether she has a navel or not. And like any fellow human you might poll on the street, I would not dare try and find out. Everyone knows what happens when you try to touch a cat belly.

The mystery remains.

The Nutria

Why does the official name of this invasive and voracious swamp rat creature resemble that of an artificial sweetner or trans-fat substitute that causes liquid bowel discharge? I am talking about the Nutria, which is apparently some sort of imported pygmy beaver that destroys entire coastlines (not unlike its fellow industrious critter, the human being). Wouldn't it have been more suitable to deem the beast a "scuttlegnaw" or a "scritch," or something more suited to a sodden, 12 lb aquatic rodent?

My local paper's headlines announced today that it would not be long before citizens encountered piles of the gnawing, oily pelt beasts wriggling through our crawlspaces and air ducts, demanding tools and supplies to assist in the total destruction of coastal wetlands. With its usual reserve, the paper foretold of total environmental destruction at the hooked and shriveled forepaws of this rogue South American scourge.

Just thought you should know in case this affects your Easter plans.

You thought I'd killed him by now, didn't you?

No Name #3, the notorious feeder fish, rages on. As you can see from the photograph, he has grown fat and mysteriously pale, probably from an entire year indoors watching "Flip This House" through the walls of his tank.

As you may recall from last year's post, NN#3 was acquired on a bit of bad advice from a landscaper. The landscaper's thesis was that fish are decorative and self-maintaining, perhaps even eligible for such light landscaping tasks as keeping insects from breeding in huge, overpriced water plant containers in the yard. NN#3 and I have since learned that this is akin to expecting an unfed cat to edge your lawn.

Long ago I used to work with a fellow named George. George was best known for his love of karaoke and the ladies, in whichever order they presented themselves. He is best remembered for a drunken, lurching rendition of "New York, New York" at a very strange talent-show Christmas party, befitting of an episode of "The Office," but secondarily I remember him as a keeper of desktop goldfish. He and I shared an office, and in there with us was a 2.5 gallon tank stuffed with a handful of the doomed creatures. As you might imagine, George was a dilettante fish hobbyist, and therefore the tank rapidly became a burbling cesspoole of excrement that I faced down with a creeping sense of stress and suspense each workday. I do not doubt that all the victims perished, although I have blocked the details from my mind.

The point here is this: goldfish are not here to entertain us unless we supply them with an expensive list of aquatic facilities maintenance equipment and at least one dedicated employee. Any less will result in squalor and death.

For those of you thinking of getting a goldfish, here is a handy list of supplies:

• 10 gallons of fish tank *per fish*. Yes, you read that correctly. A ten gallon tank is bigger than the archaic 100 lb, 17" monitor that you discarded for a flat screen in 2002. Thus if you want two fish, you are buying a $700 tank stand. Try to get around this minimum gallon requirement and see what happens.
  
• Buckets
  
• A tank siphon
  
• A mold scraper
  
• A biofilter wheel
  
• Carbon filter inserts
  
• Measuring spoons and water conditioner
  
• The willingness to cycle the tank, scrape mold off plastic plants, and hoover fish poop with the tank siphon on a regular basis, even when you had a totally long day at work, and you just want to drink a beer and watch "Dog the Bounty Hunter."

I'm leaving out the plastic plants, food, and castles, just to keep the focus here on aquatic life support.

Now I believe I have ranted on the subject of fish maintenance before, but I just wanted to make sure we were clear. If you adhere to the guidelines above, your goldfish is likely to reward you by not dying, and in fact quadrupling in size, as evidenced by this year-old photo of No Name when his dimensions rivaled those of a large paper clip. He now has the sleek, sinister heft of a deep-sea bass, and sometimes makes me nervous when he comes thrashing to the surface for his morning fish food pellet shower. Even the cat eyes him with suspicion now, knowing that he might not make it down her maw without a struggle. She's learned an important lesson: never turn your back on the ocean.

Nontent, part IV

Tiny dog is my browser home page, and if I have to look at the smug, disembodied head of Shatner at the very top of the site for one more day I might lose my mind. That said, I have enountered nothing in the almost three weeks since posting Shatner that is worth commenting on, and so there he remains.

Thus you are now exposed to a common tiny dog rhetorical filler device known as nontent, which is the act of posting about the fact that there is nothing to post about. Other bloggers never seem to stoop this low, but I return to this crutch at least every other month.

I would not be shocked if you up and cancelled your subscription in the face of this non-contentery, as you have faithfully paid your dues by checking to see if there is content, only to be punished with nontent.

I am wondering how much rambling in this vein it will take to push Shatner far enough down the page so that if my browser window is kind of narrow, I won't see him anymore.

Oh yeah, about that blue thing. I drew it the other day. It's a character from OOL. I am thinking that if I post it in this entry it will still further ghettoize Shatner to a spot lower on the page.

Be gone, Shatner devil!