The Long and Short of It

That is how I thought management would handle publicizing my recent disappearance which occurred Friday night into Saturday until about 3:30 in the afternoon.

Instead she got all frazzled and emotional and made a dumb sign that said: "DOG MISSING. DEAF. SHORT. TRI-COLOR CORGI. 14 YEARS OLD. REWARD!" and she put it by the road at our house.

My agent and I decided that we needed to loosen Tracey Rosengrave's check-writing muscles, so I staged a publicity stunt, hoping for CNN and everyone else to report on the famous dog blogger, Arthur, who vanished without a trace. Also, Random House might put me under contract when I reappeared to the great joy of all the bipeds who are in my multicultural pack. They would take a picture, and it would get all over the news like that stupid cat who ended up in France.

Here's what happened. After management went to bed, I waited a few minutes, because she is tired from all the rubber scraping and dealing with her relatives, and she sleeps like a rock. Then I went to the gate where the meter readers go in and out - like they really are so anxious to get back to the office to send us a bill, they cannot take the time to close the gate.

I walked out and decided to go as far as I could considering that I am 98 years old and have arthritis. I ended up at a place quite far away, and I laid in their flowers, so I could take a nap. I wanted to be fresh when the photographers showed up.

Karen and Klaus were the bipeds who found me. Karen saw the dumb sign, and went to get you-know-who. She came driving up, and she had my special water dish and cold water and my treats and everything, but no newspapers were there.

Klaus is a Vietnam veteran, so we are going to give some money to the Vietnam Veterans, because Klaus and Karen would not let the boss give them anything. I am a good American, so that is OK with me.

I slept in the car all night.

Back to the drawing board.

I decided to fight fire with fire.

If you have been following my blog carefully, you already know that the bipeds are fighting over an estate while I wait patiently on the deck. Management is the boss of the estate. She is bossy anyway, so it was a good fit. Today she is getting her perquisites by scraping rubber that was on the back of carpet in the basement. When you are the boss, you get a lot more perquisites than the people who stand around. Also, you get to go to Ace Hardware and Lowe's a lot more and stare at paint samples.

Well, I decided to redecorate. If I have to live on the porch, then I want it to reflect my personality and style. Before, I had a pink cotton blanket and a thin, threadbare mattress pad where I could lounge and catch a few winks. It was OK, but I am not a pink sort of dog, and I could not invite anyone over, because I have an image to protect. I had the decorator replace it with a bold red wool king-sized blanket and a fluffy mattress pad with a premium cotton bath towel in blue on top. Also, I changed my dish and water bowl.

It's a good thing.

We have been driving around a lot this afternoon. Meijer's had my lamb and rice treats on sale for 79 cents a pound, so we had to go there, of course. When my driver was going through the parking lot, a big SUV pulled in front of us, and it had a sticker on it that said "UN is not your Friend".

I had to think for a minute: "Who is UN?"

Then I remembered. It is the United Nations.

I wonder what they did now.

Management was talking to herself about "that jackass George Bush". I think she was referring to Barney's father. As far as I know he is still our friend. He says that we must patrol the border and bomb Iran.

It is hard to make friends when you are bombing them and making them stay on their side of the fence. I am a conservative because I do not worry about things like that.

I hope they do not bomb Iowa instead. I have friends in Iowa. It begins with an 'I' and has only 4 letters in the name. I have heard that George Bush is dyslexic. Oh oh.

While I am waiting for Tracey Rosengrave to cut my advance, I thought I would get rich another way, at least to tide me over. We investors know all about Modern Portfolio Theory - or MPT as busy people and dogs who do not have enough time to say or write all the words call it.

In MPT there is something called a Random Walk. It means that a stock price does not follow a path, even though you want it to. It does what it wants, and no one can tell what it will do in the future. The only way to know what price a stock price is going to be in the future is to cheat. I tried cheating, but I am a dog, so they caught on right away. Also, I do not know any insiders.

This means you should buy and hold a stock, because you cannot beat the market, because the market will beat you up and then you cannot write a book or blog or anything else. I do not have enough time to hold a stock. I want to get rich quick. I am, after all, a Welsh American. This is what we do in America - get rich quick.

I tried to take a random walk this morning. It is trash day where I live. You-know-who is always busy, so I thought I would just take a stroll.

The Federal Express man turned me in. He never heard of the random walk. Management was gushing all over him. Maybe she wants to marry him. I hope not. I wish she would marry a hot dog salesman or a sheep farmer. She bought Lucent Technologies. This is why we need to find her a husband.

This is Day #4 of waiting for our Fix-It Team to show up.

Because I am a scrupulously honest blog star, I must report that D&D did a very excellent job for us a couple of weeks ago. This inspired management to hire them to help her some more. I am worried that their A+ performance was like Haley's Comet, which appears every 76 years. (I had my assistant look it up.) Also, to continue with my honest reporting, they remembered to put dog food in my dish 2 weeks ago when management was preoccupied, and they filled it up all the way to the top, and even thought I prefer steak and fried chicken to dog food, it was nice of them to help prevent a domestic quarrel and a call to the ASPCA.

Yesterday management called Darrell #1 to see if maybe they could fit some work in between drinking beer and taking naps, and Darrell #1 said he could not come over because he was waiting for a call back from the South Bend police, because his ex-wife's former boyfriend's daughter had burned down his ex-wife's garage on Sunday night, and the police did not do anything, so Darrell #1 was waiting for them to call so he could give them a piece of his mind.

I know this because management was muttering some epithets. She is becoming a misanthrope.

You will be interested in hearing this. When you are famous, everyone wants to know what you do when you are not posing for pictures or signing autographs, or in the case of yours truly, writing a blockbuster book which will make him rich as well as famous.

Here is what I do: stay outside on my roofed deck, rain or shine, and wait for the floor guys or the painter or the fix-it duo** to sand or paint or the fix-it twins to say, "We have to be getting on home now, because the phone might ring, and we have to drink a lot of beer just in case."

This has been going for for over two weeks now, and I am pretty sick of it. And just to tee me off even more, a certain biped "lady" bought Spartan Treats for Large Dogs, instead of my Milkbones, which I have blogged about previously. So far today I have eaten three of these over-sized treats for Large Dogs and a left-over corner of a cheese croissant and the last few bites of management's breakfast sandwich from Dunkin' Donuts.

I have blogged about donuts before, too. This staying on the porch routine is interfering with my creative flow. That and our sad sack PC. Sorry, Jimbo, but I am annoyed. Get Gates on the phone.

** D & D (hint: they cannot shoot a bottle rocket straight)