Rebel, sans clue

By the time I reached high school, I used to cut class more days than not. I almost flunked my senior year for failing to achieve minimal attendance. At the time, I thoroughly believed I was sticking it to The Man. You see, I was really angry at The Man. The Man, for example, wanted everyone to attend pep rallies and clap when the dumb asshole football players who'd been drinking liquor cabinet mixtures under the bleachers earlier that morning cross-dressed as cheerleaders, and staggered around grabbing at each others' bras stuffed with sport socks.

At 17, I felt such antics were part of a vast fascist conspiracy against my happiness, and so I spent a lot of time glowering under a willow tree in an adjacent park, sticking pins into a virtual Man in my mind. At the time, it did not occur to me that The Man didn't really care whether I attended classes or not, and meanwhile, I was failing to obtain a basic education, and slowly becoming one of those people who can't name the three branches of government in those occasional surveys illustrating the deep ignorance of average Americans.

Did I pass this test just now? Did The Man learn his lesson when I refused to attend history class in 1988? The answer to both questions might sadly be no.

Leg deli

There is no way to adequately explain this to anyone but my brother used to partake in a practice known as "leg deli," whereby he would take lunchmeat out of the fridge and slap it on his leg whilst digging remaining sandwich fixings out of the fridge drawers.

Aside from the occasional sandwich implied by this anecdote, he basically ate nothing but Cheez-its and Coke for the better part of the 1980's. He often skulked off to his room with the iconic orange box in hand when whatever my mom had fixed for dinner contained anything deemed "sour," which was his catch-all descriptor for any flavor that wasn't cheese. At times, my mom would make an alternative portion for him stripped of anything "sour," a concession later admitted by my sibling himself as being a "circus sideshow freak meal."

Leg deli, people.

StumbleUpon

Bird already blogged about StumbleUpon and so I am kind of like the last clown to the party on this topic, but how else would you find something as random as this?

Just the thing for those of you not killing enough time on the intertube.

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.

I BEGAN TO CALL THEM VOIDS !!

Probably someone somewhere has an explanation for why basically all candidates for political office, outside of the two major party candidates, are certifiably insane. Of course arguments can and are made that the major party candidates are also of questionable mental solvency, see POTUS, but I content that probably, his voter guide statement was at least proofread by somebody.

It almost seems like a two-party conspiracy to me, that anyone outside of the mainstream Democratic or Republican candidate in any given election is basically always a five alarm fruit loop. Anyone who has read a voter guide knows exactly what I am talking about.

The winning wingnut in the voter guide for my particular location this election year is independent senatorial candidate Robin Adair. I shudder to think this woman actually invested money in a campaign in which the ramblings of her inner bag lady were pasted without any editorial polish to both her web site and the state voter's guide. Did no one in this woman's life care enough to gently suggest the possibly questionable nature of sentences like " I BEGAN TO CALL THEM "VOIDS" , WHICH HAS A HORRIBLE REALITY !" and "PLEASE HELP US TO PAY THE BILLS IN THE BIG GLASS JAR ON THE FOLDING TABLE !!" and "GLOBAL WARMING -- see "Current Issues" -- I think the cause is an earth crust without water.." and... oh, I could go on, but please check out her web site yourself.

There is evidence that at least one of Robin Adair's inner voices has an editorial bent. "clean up and rewrite...]," it adminishes her, in the middle of the prose on her web site. Too bad her inner voices did not appear to be speaking to one another in time for the election.

Runner-up award goes to Mike the Mover, who may or may not have appeared on the ballot this year, I can't seem to recall. If he hadn't though, surely he will be back, unless he was run over by a box car down at the train tracks.

Notes from underground

As I previously mentioned, I have opted out of Nanowrimo this year, for how could I top a masterwork such as this? However I have secured an exclusive interview with a certain sibling, given name of Ken but sometimes known as Jerk Idiot during the 1980's, who has risen to the Nano-challenge in my stead. In his own words:

Tiny dog: What is the title of your book?
Ken: "Shipwrecked By The Laughter Of The Gods."

Tiny dog: How would you describe the plot, in 15 words or less?
Ken: Mankind undertakes to set himself up as a judge of truth and knowledge... and chokes on the bitter fruit. (editor's note: this is 19 words and thus shows that Ken is a disciple of Nano's guiding principle: maximum wordcount at any cost.)

Tiny dog: What is your most desperate sentence?
Ken: "The Jellied Julianned Vole Knees are sliced and arranged, as you requested, on the silver serving trays in the shape of your head."

Tiny dog: What is the farthest you have fallen behind?
Ken: Today. 6680 words behind schedule.

Tiny dog: If you fail to reach 50,000, what will probably be the reason?
Ken: Pathetic and shallow excuses involving traffic and raisins... uh... I'll think of something. Wrong! I will strive to succeed and never forget as mankind insisted during Apollo 13 (another in a long line of strangely celebrated human disasters). Failure is not an option. (Hint: It's mandatory.)

We here at tiny dog wish Ken luck in his endeavor to reach 50,000.

Parsnip!

I'm at Safeway the other day, it's one of their more creepy and dispirited locations but it happens to be near my house, so there I am racing past the 75% off bins of fun-size Halloween Twizzler dregs with my sack of bagels, when what should I happen across while cutting through the produce department?

A parsnip.

I realize right then and there that I have never eaten a parsnip in my entire life. Not ever. The colorless tubers lay there, neatly stacked like Presto-logs, and I wracked my brain to even think of one thing parsnips go in, and I come up with nothing.

People, what in the mother loving heck is a parsnip?!

Update I baked up a parsnip and reached the following conclusion. Parsnips are basically a fusion of potato and carrot, with a drop of peppermint oil. I guess parsnips just hooked up with a crappy PR firm or something because they seem perfectly palatable to me, although no one seems to eat them.

Nano!

I am not Nanowrimo'ing this year. I mean, it just wouldn't be fair to all of you n00bs out there, as I have won three times. I am the Miyagi of nano, and you are the Ralph Macchio. It is now my time to don the tattered Yoda robe and shake my head as you fail to raise the X-wing fighter of prose from the muck. Wait, that's a mixed metaphor.

Whatever. Here is what I know:

• You must write 1,666 words a day and you must write them in the morning.
• You cannot edit. You can't even re-read anything.
• Do not skip a day, even when you have a bunch of drunk relatives over at your house on Thanksgiving, playing Cranium. This bears repeating. Do not skip a day. You're going to think you are good enough to make up a missed day, but a missed day guarantees that you will fail, unless you are, well, see the next bullet.
• Don't read the forums on nanowrimo.org, they will only make you realize that all of your fellow nano writers are homeschooled 13 year old hacks obsessed with sci-fi/fantasy who end up hitting 100,000 word counts after 10 days because their parents do not let them watch TV, associate with other children, or leave the house.

Crap my laptop battery has 13 minutes left. Those tips should at least keep you going for a week.