grur grur grur. let me tell ewe, this knew thing eye've discovered is jest the cat's pajamas! (eye say that because cats our the theme inn this post. eye donut have a clue what cat's pajamas our. gilda never where's pajamas. gross, yes, but then she says sum folks like harry naked pusses.) any weigh, what iams hear two talk about is this knew technology thing that eye've had the opportunition two beta-test. its called the meowlingual, end it bills itself as a cat translation device. does it work? its friggin' brilliant! awl day long gilda's bean running around the house screaming, "woody ewe to-bit idiot, dum butt, turd-eating, bawl-licking, flee-bag, lacy-ast, know-account, dog-breadth, peace-of-schmidt, whore's-faced excuse four a life-form, ewe could knot hold a candle two bob hope."

sew eye fire up my knew meowlingual and what dew eye here? music two my ears. everything gilda's saying gets translated into "meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow!" kewl.

Posted by Woody at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Now that the Supreme Court has taken off for its summer recess, it's a good time for me to take a look back at the impact of various recent legal rulings. I'm not going to waste a lot of time on the High Court rulings that primarily affect humans, since they're of little consequence, but I'll reference a couple of them just for the benefit of my biped readers.

The first case revolved around some folderol about diversity in higher education and alleged resistance to said diversity. Now I'm going ignore whatever presumption it is that lets humans refer to a four-year paid vacation from reality as "higher education" and get right to the point. As long as humans make dogs go to obedience school specifically for the purpose of learning to get along with other dogs, then I say what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Without a bit of obedience training we can't take you out in public because you just start yelling at strangers.

The other court case that seemed to get everybody's panties in a bunch had something to do with a couple of people in Texas who were doing it doggie-style. You can imagine what my position is on that. At any rate, you probably know that I'm an advocate for neutering humans before they're old enough to breed, specifically because they're so infantile about sex. They all do it, but they all go bonkers when anyone else does it. They'd all be much less high-strung if they were neutered. And it also helps preserve that melodious high-pitched voice in the males.

But none of that is either here nor there. What I'm really concerned about are the cases that more directly impact our lives.

Perhaps one of most significant legal rulings in my lifetime is the one coming out of Utah that rules that cats and dogs are not the same. This gives legal weight to my long-running assertion (which is also the title of my new book, due out in October) that "Dogs are from Neptune, Cats are from Uranus."

In a decision that's both despicable and retrograde, a New York court has ruled that cutting off a dog's tail does not violate an animal anti-cruelty statute. I'm like, "say what?" I mean, when there's a rule that says that no dog's tail can be longer than four inches, I'm pretty sure we're dealing with some seriously misplaced pianist envy. As our legal champion argued, dogs use their tails to communicate. The logic that tails get tangled in the briars may be true, but I'd like to point out that if we cut the tongues off of our humans, they'd get in a lot less trouble, too. That doesn't justify the act. Sheesh. (P.S. - AKC show dogs running around in briars? Those prissies? Yeah, right. I'll believe it when I see it.)

And here's an amusing lawsuit as told from the human POV. Apparently some guy named his dog after his next door neighbor and then went around cursing the dog by name in public. What it doesn't mention is that not only did the dog initiate her own countersuit alleging slander, but she has also changed the name of her human from "bark bark" to "barf barf."

And finally, there's the issue of just how much a dog is worth. Here's a case where God says a dog is worth "$50,000" and the Court is left to decide whether or not it dares to differ with the omnipotent one. Now there's a lot to consider in this case, but I'd like to point out that the time your dog warned you that your husband was home early and coming up the driveway was probably worth $50,000 all by itself, right? And I won't even mention how many times we've had to clean out the cat box for you. So be generous.

Posted by Chigger at 5:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

schnort, schnort, schnort. eye want two pass on a bit of a cautionary tail as it has bean past on two me buy my good buddy marc over at quitthat.com. it seams that their was this dog in west virginia that got in sum kind of accident end than went and chequed himself into the hospital. this is supposed two bee a hart-warming feel-good story, end perhaps it is.

butt once yor dun with awl the crying, lettuce take a look at what this story reely tells us. it tells us that if that black lab had been restrained by a leash, ore locked inside a house ore a fenced-in yard, end knot able two go two the hospital, he'd bee dead write now.

deceased.

expired.

life-challenged.

compost, as it whir.

it wood bee an ex-dog.

end yet, sew many well-meaning dog roommates think that their supposed two restrain there dog. well, eye'm hear two tell ewe that ewe our knot supposed two restrain yor dog. never. ever. knot if ewe care. two survive, dogs kneed two run free. in the streets. in the buildings. in the fields. in the living rooms. in the flour gardens. everywear. awl the weigh two the hospital if necessary. otherwise, wheel dye. wee kneed hour FREEDOM!

as near as eye ken tell, their's only won dog in this entire world that gets the kind of respect a dog deserves.

pee s. - marc also calls attention two my favorite leisure thyme activity short of squirrel fishing -- cat fishing, witch of coarse eye predicted.

Posted by Woody at 8:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

snarf snarf snarf. eye yam sew sew very disappointed. their it was inn black and white type... "catproof your computer." yes yes yes eye thought. catproof my computer. eye was sew excited eye peed in my plants. (course eye always dew that.) eye was putting inn my paypal password sew fast the little password dots was turning into ovals. awl eye could think about was finally having a gilda-proof web blog. butt knooooow. it turns out that pawsense software only does windows and does knot due macintosh. eye yam sew sew very disappointed.

any weigh, if ewe half a blog end a windows computer end a belligerent cat maybe this is four ewe. as four me, eye'm going two sea if eye can get a recording contract with these people dewing those "sounds that annoy cats." eye can dew that.

Posted by Woody at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Well, I'm back from summer camp and sucking up all the air-conditioning I can get up my nose. I was at Camp Derryduh doing some post-doc research in semiotics, a recent hobby of mine. For those of you who are unfamiliar with semiotics, it's the study of signs and symbols and signal fires and artificial constructs, etc.

Some of my friends think that studying semiotics is dumb, but it's not, it's just French. Granted, the word itself comes to us as a bastardization of the phrase "semi-neurotic," and originally referred to ideas that were halfway stupid, but we're well past the time when there was anything halfway about it.

What I've been concentrating on is trying to figure out what signs about dogs really signify. For instance, here's a sign I found posted on craphound.com (apparently not a real dog) that I've been analyzing. (click image for larger original site version.) As near as I can tell, this sign is a funny jab at women, who are more used to being told "Attention Wives: Pick up after your husbands. Thank you." Of course dogs don't leave their underwear and beer cans laying around, so the tongue-in-cheek humor is immediately evident. But I'm not interested in the human humor. Rather, I'm concerned about the second part of the sign that starts "Attention Dogs�"

Trying to figure out what this sign signifies is problematic on several levels. You know how Japanese children like to run around with t-shirts that have English phrases on them? And you laugh at how ridiculous it is? Stuff like "I love your happy watermelon" or "My homework went to the bathroom and all I got was this stupid t-shirt." But they don't know what it says. They just think it's amusing to be wearing something with English on it.

And the same thing happens with English-speaking athletes walking around with Asian character tattoos that look cool but actually say something like "My mom's hairdresser is in the very orange refrigerator."

So, I have to assume that whoever it was in the North Vancouver district who made this sign didn't actually speak dog and didn't realize that when dogs see "Grrrrr, bark, woof" it means "Did any of your father's bear turds lose this weird collar?"

Woody is of the opinion that there's a typo in this sign and what the human meant to say was "Grrr, bark, wolf" which, of course, means "Next rest stop, 23 miles, so you better go now." Possible, I guess, but if they're not willing to hire a dog proofreader, then they deserve to be ridiculed.

Anyway, if you, like me, are a big fan of semiotics, then you might be interested in my Master's Thesis: "The Semiotics of French Dog Signs" even if it is a bit technical for the casual reader.

Posted by Chigger at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)