The Long and Short of It

We are living like the box car children. Only we have a Nissan Infiniti. But still.

My water dish, bowl and bag of Nutro Natural Choice Dental Care dog food are on the front seat floor. My water is in a plastic jug here on the back seat. There is a lawn chair, laundry soap and management's cosmetics clogging my space. Today I ate lunch at the beach parking lot. "Pretend you are a pioneer, " says the Boss. I say pretend you are in a nut house.

Ever since her class reunion she has been acting like a flaky artist because some people told her she should write a book. She used to be a big deal. Boring. Where is Joan Crawford? Oh, yeah. Dead.

I would say fine to her airs if she would write a book about a kid with glasses who is a wizzard and who goes to a school named Snaggledorf or Smithereens. For someone who wrote to the Famous Writer's School when she was 15, she has not learned a lot about the publishing business. She could make a mint writing junky suspense novels. But, no.

Tonight we had dinner in the car a la Boheme - salami, ham, olives, a sourdough roll and Amish cheese. Amish people do not drive cars, but I suppose it is OK to eat their cheese while you are sitting in one.

This picture is me in the back seat. For a while I was worried that management intended to hog all the food for herself, but I should have known. She is a liberal. She shares.

It is important for bloggers, even small time pretenders like Management and especially for blog stars like me, to post something every day, so your readers do not get annoyed when they check your website and do not see any new news. The liberals are so busy lying about Barney’s father and the War on Terror that we loyal conservatives have all we can do just to keep up.

Some liberals call it the War on Terra. Terra is Latin. It means Earth. What do they want? A mushroom cloud in their back yard? We have mushrooms in our new house where it rained inside. That is because Management hired a dope to do some work. I have had enough of mushrooms, so I do not want a mushroom cloud. Mushrooms are like lettuce. You cannot even eat them with cheese. They are that bad.

My news for today concerns a guy at the parking lot where the Boss and I were having lunch yesterday. It is at one of my beaches, but the park rangers were there, and they put a false sign up saying “No Dogs Allowed”, so we stayed in the parking lot until they left. I am going to call Barney himself about this, if I have to. It is more liberal worry-warting about dogs that bite or do not know how to use the restroom. They call it Public Health. That is where our taxes go. For liberal signs and stripping good Americans of their rights. Who barks more on the Fourth of July? Tell me that. Loyal canine Americans. That’s who.

OK. The guy was in a van, and he was talking on the phone, and he said that someone went to hell and saw it first hand and there were “two legs” of it and pits and fire. Also he said that a woman was trying to crawl out of a pit and she almost made it out but a demon came along and pushed her back in and a guy named Jesus was crying - he is a good guy but he was just showing this person around hell, I guess - anyway, Jesus was crying, because his brothers and sisters were in hell and he could not get them out.

Why didn’t he get a fire extinguisher? Possibly he could have called the fire department. He is supposed to be able to do miracles and things like that, too.

I wonder if he does roofs. He was a carpenter. Well, anyway, this guy did not know if this story about hell was true or a lie by the devil to throw him off because he said that everything about hell was already in the Bible, and “Can’t nobody add nothing to it.”

We just ate our chicken, and I took a nap. Hell is being where you can’t go onto your own darned beach because of sissy liberals. And getting your nails trimmed. And cats sleeping on the bed where you used to sleep before you got arthritis.

I am not at the dog hotel yet. That is fine with me. They act real happy and everything when the check book comes out, but they are rude when you do not "go outside" when they want and other dumb ideas. I am not a rule follower. I am accustomed to going outside whenever I feel like it, and I do not appreciate their rigid schedule. Also, I might feel like sitting down in the middle of the dog run, because I do not feel like running. What is wrong with that? It's not like I am "going outside" on their rug or something.

Today I sat in the car while management went to her lawyer's office. Later we parked somewhere else, and the Boss got my air mattress out of the trunk, because I do not like to step on the bare street, and there is a cushion in case I cannot get out of our very small back seat unless she pushes me, which is her fault because she will not buy a bigger car with a hydraulic lift for yours truly.

Anyway, we walked to our caffe with the two f's, and she had tea, and everyone was looking at me and saying, "Look at the cute dog." "What is wrong with his leg?" "Hello, cutie." They were not talking to management, either.

Some Polish people were sitting there talking Polish, but they said, "Navy Pier" in English. Maybe it was Russian. Anyway, they better not be spies, because I have had enough of these liberal loudmouths telling on Barney's father when he was listening in on their phone calls. I do not know if Barney's father knows Polish, but he was a cheerleader in college, so he did not have time to study or go to class. I think everyone who does not speak English should just leave.

I had a bite of a cheese croissant and pretended that it was so-so. It was excellent, really, but big stars like me cannot act too like we are cool with everything.

Once again I write to you on probation from the dog hotel.

Management has it in her head that she needs to be away all the time looking for an apartment for us. I do not know if she can be trusted to find one that is suitable for a star of my rank. Also I want two bowls like always and a big rug by the side of the bed and no cats.

So next week I have to go back to the hotel where for a bonus they give you a half-price bath. The last time we went through this little charade I decided to sit like Gandhi or something and the bath clerk told management that I was “good” and just sat there. Well, duh. I pretend that I am at the Beverly Wilshire or the Regency or the Four Seasons where you do not have to even breathe if you do not feel like it. They have really good petit fours at the Ritz Carlton. At the Animal Care Center they have Science Diet treats for small dogs. Are you getting the picture?

The Boss is really upset about something and I hope she does not forget to close the car door when she drives some place like she did last week. Unless she has another way for me to get home from the joint, I think she better get a grip.

The next time you hear a liberal say you should not use chemicals and that when bugs and snakes get in your house you should just go out and buy them a house of their own, do not believe them.

This is what happens when you try to be natural: great big green worms get on the tomato plants.

Little wasps were supposed to lay eggs on the worms, and then the worms were supposed to die. First of all, we do not have any little wasps. Management says it is because the dumb bipeds – she called them something else – cut out the habitat when they sawed down the bushes she wanted to keep.

It is funny that she wanted to save a bush, because she does not like anyone named Bush. They are all in something called the Carlyle Group. It is a lot of old rich guys. One of them is a director of a great big company that makes drugs and chemicals. If certain people do not like worms in the garden, they better stop saying bad things about Barney’s father. He will just call his friends, and they will not give you any chemicals, even if you say you will pay them a million dollars when the wasps move or go on strike.

That’s life in the food chain. Get used to it.

When you are famous everyone wants a piece of you.

There I was, waiting for management to do whatever it is she does.

“OK, Artie, let’s go.” Then she remembers to write 10 checks or clean the bathroom. In this case she was picking up plastic fasteners that careless bipeds threw on the ground at the Ironman contest they had at one of my beaches this weekend.

Along comes a stringer photographer. He must have been following us. Miss You-Know-Who has her head in the clouds a lot of the time. She does not know if someone is following us. She worries about the birds. She worries about the cats. She worries about the tomato plant and whether the braconid wasps will lay their eggs on the tomato horn worms, or if she should take out the Queen Anne’s Lace, since the reason she lets it grow is so the broconid wasps will come there to live. If they are just ripping us off and living on our Queen Anne’s Lace and do not kill the horn worms, then I say evict them.

Back to my story. I was catching a few winks. Big deal. If you see this picture in the junky newspapers in the supermarket checkout line and the headline says, “Blogging dog is a fake!”, your inquiring mind can move on to something else, because you will already know the story behind the story.

My production assistant forgot to charge the battery, and we did not have time to edit this photo before the computer crashed, and we had to drive to the library real fast before it closed.

My pen has been silent for the past week, because, as I told you before, the Boss went to a "retreat" whatever that is. It is liberal, you can bet. They probably sat around all day petting cats and thinking of ways to try to make the rest of us feel guilty. I do not feel guilty. Especially after my incarceration at the Nickerson Animal Care Center "hotel", which is code for "the slammer". That is not the topic of today's column, though. I wil have to unpack that and probably see my psychiatrist first.

Today I wish to share some candids my photographer took when we were having breakfast yesterday at this cafe she always goes to get coffee. We had to sit outside because I am a dog. They spell it caffe. They put the extra 'f' in there so they can charge you 4.95 for scrambled eggs. That is where our money goes. To make matters worse, she stopped taking cream in her coffee about 10 years ago, and she never used sugar, because she is a liberal. Iced caramel frappucino from Starbucks is very excellent. Why don't we go there? Why? Because it is not a local business, and Starbucks is a big, giant corporation that takes advantage of brown people or something, I suppose.

When we drove up there was already a dog there. Then a massive white dog - or was it a bear? - named Dolly sat next to us. I thought she was OK, but then she started to growl when I was sniffing her. I mean, she was 15 times bigger that I am. Being the fearless journalist that I am, I was, quite naturally, trying to get the who, what, when, where, why and how of Dolly Dog. She was a snob and a - well, I will not swear, because of my family values. (Bitch.)

Several bipeds stopped at our table: "Ooo, look at the cute dog." "He is so sweet." "He is a true Corgi."

We bagged three new fan club members. That is the good news. The bad news is that I am sick and tired of these country bumpkins who say things like, "That is a true Corgi." Have you ever heard of a false Corgi? I am a famous blog artist, and I still have to put up with all these dumb comments.