When Puppies Happen to Good People

Puppies don’t grow on trees. I was disappointed to discover this, especially since I’ve spent countless hours burying other people’s puppy’s in my back yard. In my heart I always knew a puppy grove was unrealistic, but I figured nature owed me at least a puppy shrub. I was once known as the greatest human enemy of man’s best friend, so my transition from dog hater to dog owner was filled with just enough hypocrisy to make me an excellent candidate for president. Much like original sin and the invention of table coasters, my new status as a pet owner can be blamed entirely on a woman. My wife and I were in a frighteningly rundown furniture store two weeks ago looking for a dining room table when Lola wandered out of my line of sight. Moments later, she called out my name. I assumed she’ d found something relatively harmless, like rapist or a cobra with AIDS, so I took my time making my way to her position. When I finally reached her, I was horrified to discover the one thing guaranteed to ruin our way of life: a pile of baby wiener dogs. Cuteness, like earthquakes and hurricanes, can be measure on an empirical scale according to its strength. That mound of two-week-old dachshunds registered a 9.2, which is powerful enough to burn through steel. There’s a reason diamond-tipped saws are being phased out in favor of pictures of kittens in most heavy industries. That mound of miniature canines hit Lola with a flamethrower of adorableness, burning down any hope I had of living a dog-free existence. It was impossible to talk Lola out of her puppy lust, and it was too late to hit her with an AIDS-infected cobra. One way or another, we were going to get a dog. I grudgingly accepted my fate and began researching which breeds of dogs have the shortest life span.

Dachshunds are considerably less cute as adults.

The dachshunds were free and poorly engineered, making them an excellent pet by my Machiavellian criteria, but Lola thought zero dollars was too much to pay for an animal that wouldn’t survive more than three minutes in our house. The breed’s elongated spine bends unnaturally when it goes up stairs, creating a very real risk that the animals can snap in half. Our house is comprised of nothing but stairs, save for the occasional hallway that leads to yet more stairs, and I had no intention of spending my days caring for a pack of paralyzed wiener dogs. Dachshunds were officially ruled out as a viable pet candidate, hilarious though their paraplegic presence in our house might have been.

Having been thus thwarted in our first attempt at dog acquisition, Lola and I began researching dog breeds on the internet. My criteria were simply: I wanted something lazy that didn’t shed and could be trained to use a litter box. Essentially I wanted a slow-moving pillow that pooped. I wasn’t crazy about the pooping part either, but I figured I had to make some compromises since the surgery to sew shut a canine anus is very expensive. The only breed that met our criteria was the Miki, an animal created by a breeder who failed to take any genealogical notes. There is no universal definition of what a Miki should be, so breeders who claim to be selling that particular type of animal could actually be offering anything from a discolored poodle to a small horse. The only characteristic Mikis have in common is their price; they can’t be purchased with anything less than a home equity loan or a winning lottery ticket. As usual, I decided to save money by buying non-name brand. We found a woman who breeds something practically identical to Mikis, only with a different muzzle and known parentage. It would take me days to describe exactly what breeding goes into them, but suffice it to say that if there was an orgy attended by every small, yappy dog on the planet, our puppies would be the result.

Sometimes selective breeding creates a beautiful animal. Other times it results in a dog with a second head on its butt. I don't know which option is better, but I certainly know which one is cheaper.

I’ve never been a huge fan of dogs, but it still made sense for Lola and I to buy two puppies rather than one. That way there’s not as much pressure to feed them; if I forget to fill their bowl, one dog can just eat the other. It also made sense from a sociological perspective to buy multiple puppies. Dogs, like children, can raise each other if trapped in the same cage for a long enough period of time. This would be the perfect strategy if our dogs didn’t whine at a pitch somewhere between chirping birds and prehistoric animals. If you’ve heard the noise those small , carnivorous dinosaurs make in Jurassic Park II, then you’ve already vicariously experienced one of the joys of owning my dogs. I’m not against whining in general because it’s the main way I communicate with my wife. My main problem with the dogs whining is that the only thing they want is for me to pay attention to them, which is unfortunate because I wanted a non-shedding, litter box-trained dog specifically so I could ignore it from the moment we bought it until the moment I used it to plant a new puppy shrub in our backyard. The dogs don’t want me to play with them, either. I tried chasing them earlier today and I think I caused one of them to have a mild stroke. The dogs simply want me to be in the same room as them, indicating that they’ve formed a bond with me after being in our house for less than forty-eight hours. This was expected since a dog is essentially a friend you can buy, but these dogs are even less discerning than most in how they allocate their affection. The woman we bought them from warned us that they’re very easy to steal since they’ll gladly hop in a stranger’s car and ride away with them. In essence, that’s what they did when they piled into a vehicle with Lola and I for our trip halfway across the Midwest. The dogs might be vulnerable to thieves, but at least I know that if necessary I can always steal two of their kind more to replace them.

Puppies have two modes: pooping and searching for another place to poop. It only took our dogs two days to figure out how to use the lines on the dining room carpet to play bingo with their own droppings.

Although they are highly replaceable, I’ve grown rather attached to these puppies – who we named Spencer and Niko – but that attachment lasts only as long as one or both of them isn’t pooping on my floor. On a good day, that means I can only like them in thirty-second bursts. Spencer uses a litter box when he’s in his cage, but he’s made it readily apparent that he much prefers my hardwood floors as his fecal dumping ground. Niko, who is the alpha dog, shuns all pretenses and simply holds it until I let him out of his cage. The fact that he only expels waste when it can somehow damage my house is a testament to his incredible bladder control. Lola is in Washington, D.C., this week on a work-related trip, so right now it’s just me and the two puppies in the house. I’m not worried about the responsibility since there’s virtually no way I can lose. If the dogs stay alive it will prove that they’re impossible to kill, so I’ll never have to bother caring for them again. If the opposite proves to be the case, I’ll have yet another chance to establish that illusive puppy grove in my backyard.

Mr. Nagel Goes to Washington

There are many great men who want to be the next president of the United States. Rick Nagel, I-Montana, is not one of them. The congressman graciously sat down with me earlier this week to discuss his aspirations for the highest office in the land.

Q: Why do you want to be president?

A: I wouldn’t say that I love America, but I like it enough to feel guilty if I fool around with some foreign country on the weekend. In addition to my lukewarm patriotism, I’m also bored and filled with spite. I plan to use my presidential powers mostly for good, but I’d be lying if I said most of my former high school classmates won’t mysteriously die from weapons-grade smallpox.

Q: What’s your response to critics who accuse you of being just another Washington insider?

A: I couldn’t find Washington, D.C., on a map. Seriously, I almost had to skip my first term in Congress because I didn’t know how to get to the damn place. Then I realized that my map was actually a cartoon drawing on one of those Pizza Hut placemats. The whole east coast was covered by a giant pepperoni with arms and legs. That’s why during my administration all personified pizza toppings will be executed.

Q: What’s your solution to the situation in Iraq?

A: The mistake we made was invading a country full of angry people with guns. As commander-in-chief, I promise to only attack places where the gun-wielding inhabitants have pleasant dispositions. That’s why an assault on Iran is out but a preemptive strike against Nebraska could very well be in.

Q: Do you seriously intend to invade Nebraska?

A: There’s no reason to invade, but there’s also no reason not to invade. When you do something without an apparent motivation, people by default assume you’re driven by altruism. I could use the political capital generated by attacking Nebraska to pursue healthcare reform or even to survive my first few media-generated scandals. For whatever reason, TV news networks think it’s a big deal when a man wants to enjoy an occasional drug-fueled zoo animal orgy in the comfort of the Oval Office.

Q: Are you prolife or prochoice?

A: I believe in compromise. All fetuses should be cloned so that every pregnant mother carries two children. One should be murdered immediately after being expelled from the uterus, and the other should be forced to live forever through the use of every life support system in existence. Most Americans will find this plan so controversial that they’ll just stop having sex, making abortion a non-issue for the first time in thirty years.

Q: If elected, what will you do about America’s current economic state?

A: The cost of gas climbs ever higher as the value of the dollar continues to fall. My solution is to make gasoline the national currency. That way American’s can enjoy the benefits of crippling deflation right up until the moment that the last drop of oil is used up.

Q: But what will Americans use to power their cars?

A: Thanks to global warming, people should be able to walk to work year-round in most parts of the country. This should also solve America’s obesity epidemic. Those who commute great distances will die in transit, making thousands of jobs available to recent college graduates with young, fresh legs. The elderly will be the first to die off under the new system, thereby making Social Security solvent again.

Q: How will you balance the nation’s security and civil liberty needs?

A: I’ve already found the perfect balance. On the one hand I won’t tap anyone’s phone lines, but on the other I will bind everyone to the land. Liberals and conservatives are too close-minded to admit it, but the only true way to ensure the survival of democracy is to give feudalism a chance.

Q: How will you uphold family values?

A: For the past few years the value of a four-member family has held steady at about $120,000, assuming that the children have nimble enough fingers to operate the sewing machines effectively. Some people buy gold to survive a bear market, but the surest way to stabilize your 401(k) during a recession is to invest in human slavery.

Q: What measures will you pursue to protect children from pedophiles?

A: I plan to combat sexual predators by releasing wave after wave of natural predators, like cougars and man-eating bison. They should devour the pedophiles – or maybe they’ll just eat the children. I don’t know; I’m not a biologist. But we’ll all learn the answer to that question after we shoot the animals full of steroids and then sit back to let nature take its course.

Q: Do you have any policies that won’t result in the deaths of a sizable portion of this country’s population?

A: I plan to declare October 10 to be National Ham Sandwich Day. That shouldn’t kill anyone, except for maybe the Muslims and the Jews. There will be plenty of grant money available for any scientist that can link pig meat and spontaneous human combustion.

The Importance of Tubing

There are many signs that a new venture will be successful. Stumbling across a dead body isn’t one of them – unless your venture happens to be corpse looting. I was equipped for boating, not pilfering the dead, that lazy summer afternoon, but that’s the kind of naivety that only years of experience can correct. My friend – this was back in junior high, so I did still have occasional contact with other human beings – had invited me to join him for an afternoon on Dashville’s scenic lake. By “boating,” I mean being towed behind a boat on a glorified inner tube, and by “scenic” I mean filled with dead bodies. That’s an exaggeration. One cadaver can’t fill a lake – unless the body belonged to a giant or the lake was actually a very large puddle. My memory of that afternoon is hazy, but I don’t think either condition applied in this case. My friend was out on the water when my dad and I arrived at the lake, so we made our way to the edge of the water to wait for him to return to shore. We stood there, basking in the awkward silence only an unexpected wait shared by a father and son can create, when a boat filled with conservation officers pulled up to a nearby dock. Their cargo was a guy whose agenda for that day included getting hit in the face by a speedboat. For whatever reason a boat-related fatality within minutes of our arrival failed to impress upon my dad the true safety of water sports. I didn’t get to go tubing that day, which also happened to be the first time either my dad or I had ever been to the lake, but at least I never again forgot to keep a corpse looting kit somewhere on my person.


The setting sun is often used as a metaphor for death, which makes sense given that stellar body’s link to skin cancer, global warming, and second hand smoke.

I’ve been tubing many times since that day, but the only thing that’s died on those trips is my self-esteem. I’m used to failing at physical tasks, but during most of those activities failure isn’t rewarded with a catastrophic wipe out at thirty miles per hour. Saying that tubing doesn’t always hurt is like saying that humping another man isn’t always gay. Maybe the guy had a bomb lodged in his colon and there was only one way to deactivate it. I won’t judge you, but all of your family members who saw the YouTube video likely will. The point is that while being swung around on an inner tube doesn’t technically have to result in physical agony, the conditions necessary for a painless ride are highly improbable and have strongly homosexual overtones. Much like a batter and a pitcher (but not a pitcher and a catcher – even I have my limits for innuendo), a natural rivalry exits between the guy driving the boat and guy sitting on the tube. It’s kind of like letting your best friend control the carnival ride you’re on after said friend just found out you murdered his entire family. It’s a great idea as long as you consider barfing up your internal organs to be a rewarding pastime.

Through the combined forces of velocity, inertia, and general douche baggery, a skilled boat driver will eventually dislodge any tube rider. If this happens when the boat is traveling in a straight line at a reasonable speed, the tuber will land in the water like a swan. If the opposite is the case, the guy on the rubber donut will land more like the Challenger. There’s a certain speed at which the water loses its cushioning properties and feels more like an asphalt parking lot where a broken glass and barbed wire festival just got underway. I have yet to go tubing when a boat was traveling below that speed. That fact should keep tubers so motivated that they never fall off their inflatable ally, but if human willpower alone could overcome the laws of physics the status of the entire space shuttle fleet would currently be “unexploded.” Terrified fingers inevitably fail in their desperate effort to cling to the tube, and the tuber ultimately wipes out in a frightening jumble of spacecraft and parking lot metaphors.

Women usually fail at tubing because nagging is only a useful defense against one of the Newton’s three laws of motion. Inertia always has been whipped.

While painful and not particularly fun, tubing as an absolutely necessary component of the human experience. Without tubing and other pain-inflicting sports, we’d have no way to compare our own stupidity to that of our fellow man. Thanks to the existence of pride and testosterone, life is a competition in which the winner usually dies. That’s why on average women live much longer than men. That’s also why bang-your-head-against-the-wall-as-hard-as-you-can is still a popular game at my family reunions. I don’t have many talents, but one of them is excelling at a game in which brain damage is a sign of success.

Given my short memory and inability to focus on anything that happened less recently than right now, you’ve probably already surmised that my wife and I went tubing this weekend. We joined our friends Phoebe and Rocco on an expedition to the frigid north, and the experience wasn’t entirely unenjoyable. Food and beer were ample, and most major firework mishaps happened at dwellings other than our own. I had fun tubing only because it gave me a chance to compete with Rocco, who is a horrible, horrible human being according to his parents, the Bible, and all sentient life. That competition nearly resulted in my death, which I guess means I almost won. Predictably, Rocco beat me. His funeral will be next Thursday.