This is the best short story I’ve read in quite a while - here’s an excerpt
I can’t explain this, so you’ll just have to believe me: last month my brother and sister-in-law asked my wife and me to adopt one of their cats. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much to you. Maybe you think it happens all the time — somebody decides they have too many cats and somebody else absorbs the surplus. But there was one little anomaly in this situation. We live in Ravenswood, and they live in a small town an hour’s drive from Seattle.
Why didn’t they look for a respectable, cat-needy household in their own neighborhood — even in their own time zone? That’s what I can’t explain. It was just one of those things: as Johnny Carson once said, “If you buy the premise, you’ll buy the bit.” They thought it made sense to ship a cat two thousand miles, and I ended up in a live-action version of a Magritte painting. Life works out that way sometimes — my life in particular.
Check out the rest of this amazing story at LeeSandlin.com
Once in a while I want to drink a beer and once in a while I hate my tastebuds. When those two events occur on the same day I slum it and drink cheap beer. A couple of weeks ago I went out to a bar for a friends birthday where I decided I would drink the worst of the worst. I started off with a Rainier - oh holy hell - it tasted like spilled beer thats been cooking in the sun for eight hours smells. I finished the night off with a good ole PBR. Its a massive can of beer for only a few dollars - the flavor was weak but it was beer. I caught an interesting article that reminisces about the cheap beer from our past - I saw a few on that list that I’ve had and many (thank god) that I haven’t. Feel free to check it out at Salon.
Oh - here’s my quote of the day - Drinking may cause memory loss. Or worse, memory loss
I had to stay late at work today - joy of joys! They provided me and my car a ride home because driving tired is as bad as driving drunk. Imagine staying up until 3AM - yeah - that’s the level of tired I was experiencing. I had consumed copious quantities of caffeine but the net result was a frantic heart and a barely functioning brain. My body was trying to stay awake but my brain had already hung its hat up for the evening. Jessica’s parents came out and made some “modifications” to the dog kennel and the back yard while I was asleep. I knew they were coming but I was unaware of when they arrived and when they left - when I’m asleep the red army could overrun our country and I wouldn’t have a clue.
The yard is now completely surrounded with hot wire - Texas had old sparky - Washington has dogcatraz.
The dang dog got out again - he broke out of the kennel without too much difficulty. We have had quite a hard time trying to keep him contained in the back yard. We reinforced part of the kennel by placing a piece of fence over the top in an effort to prevent him from jumping the fence. I let them hang out in the house last night after catching him but I think that in the end I was only rewarding him for making another jailbreak.
We left this afternoon to go check “Tall Ships” festival in downtown Tacoma. Prior to leaving, we locked both dogs in the kennel hoping that they wouldn’t be able to get out again. We must have crappy luck. Something set the dog off and he escaped - luckily - our neighbor directly across the street caught him. When we checked out the kennel we found that he had repeatedly smashed against the fence until it broke apart.
We fixed the kennel by completely covering the entire roof - we also chained him inside the kennel. We had to do the same thing to the last dog that I owned - she eventually hung herself during a thunderstorm when she tried to jump the fence while chained. I kept the chain short enough that he can’t get to any location where he could potentially jump and strangle. Hopefully this dog will be smart enough to avoid that fate. The kennel can now be called Dogcatraz - no dog should be able to escape this cage - if he does, he deserves to be free.
For the last few nights I’ve had one song running through my head - Thin Lizzy’s Jailbreak.
Let’s hope that I don’t have to worry about it again - if I do - its time to add hotwire to the rest of the kennel. That ought to slow him down.
I’ve dealt with it in the past and I didn’t expect to deal with it again - but - its happened. I have a spastic dog. Fireworks are illegal in the state of Washington - save for a span of about 36 hours around the fourth of July and new years. Despite the fact that fireworks are always illegal in the city of our residence, it doesn’t deter the ingrates that live here.
One of our dogs doesn’t react well to the explosions and he tends to freak out. On the third of July - when fireworks were illegal in the entire state - we had our first jailbreak. Lick had pushed the gate open and took Duke along with him for a run. Luckily for us, they ran into a yard a quarter mile down the road and were wrangled by some extremely nice people. They were just pulling into their driveway when they saw them. They stopped and opened up the rear door and the dogs hopped right in. They called the numbers on the tags and eventually we got the word from Leanne that our dogs were out. When we pulled up we saw two stressed but extremely happy dogs. We had only been gone for an hour or two so we were obviously concerned as to how they escaped and whether they would escape again.
We left again on the fourth to go down to a BBQ. Prior to leaving we locked the dogs in the kennel complete with a 7 foot tall fence. We also shut the front gate so if they made it past the first line of defense we hoped that they wouldn’t make it past a second. A few hours after we left we received a phone call from the same nice people that caught our dogs on the third - they had Lick but didn’t have Duke. We left immediately and Jessica dropped me off at the front gate where I found my dog in the back yard alone and distressed that he couldn’t get out. I took at look and couldn’t find any spot where he dug to get out - he jumped the fence - he jumped a 7 foot fence. Jessica returned with Lick and we stuck both in the back of the car and took them to her parents house where they had kennels complete with floor to ceiling fences. They made it through the night without issue. When we returned home I added another three feet to part of the fence to prevent further jailbreaks.
We brought them back today and stuck them in the yard hoping that the majority of fireworks were over. We had to run out to the grocery store to grab a few things and came home an hour later to find only one dog in the back yard. Jessica didn’t react well to the discovery. I put Duke in my car and started driving around the neighborhood. She drove off in her car and started searching all of the side streets in a two mile radius.
I couldn’t see anything from my car so I dropped it off at home and started by walking streets with Duke in tow. I gave up after a few miles knowing that the odds of finding him were low - really low. I came home and looked up the animal control and humane society phone numbers. I called both only to receive recordings. Jessica came back after some time and was still stressed because we had no leads - there was nothing that we could do.
Luckily someone found him. We got a call and drove a few miles away to find him in the car of a pair of extremely nice people. The guy, who was much larger that I am, was quite surprised by how hard it was to control Lick. He didn’t think it was dog - he thought he had a pony.
At the moment, both dogs are sitting at my feet and are quite happy to be in such proximity to us. Tomorrow I’m going to fully enclose the kennel - we’re going to hope that the fireworks stop and that I can contain our spastic dog.
I received this article earlier today and I’ve got to say that I think that the author is absolutely insane!
I am still amazed that closed minded people still exist - this probably comes from the same people that think that minorities are the cause of ALL of our economic and social woes. Read below for the biggest piece of crap I’ve read in the past six months. Jessica read it and is freaking out because she “Barracks the vote” I’m sure Ann Coulter’s satanic tail is twitching as she digs into this one believing that we are going to fall into a jihad in America if Obama won the general election. The reality is that she and other like her are bat-shit insane for believing this kind of crap.
Rich Carrol - I hope you don’t have children - in fact, I hope that you have a freak accident that removes your ability to breed because you are a fool.
I searched for responses to this crap and found a few gems
Man your rants got me real shook! World will end if Obama is elected! Muslims will steal my daughter and wife!! US will be forced to not drink!! UN will rule our parking lots! And other crazy crap that you know doubt have thought of too!!! Wow! Facts to back up your paranoid rant would be a real plus!! Good luck during the coming apocalyptic jihad!!! Salaam Alekum!
The only saving grace of this article is that it will only be taken seriously by those who believe that Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly are serious political commentators.
Conspiracy theory is not political commentary.
The Jihad Candidate - by Rich Carroll
Conspiracy theories make for interesting novels when the storyline is not so absurd that it can grasp our attention. ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ and ‘Seven Days in May’ are examples of plausible chains of events that captures the reader’s imagination at best-seller level. ‘What if’ has always been the solid grist of fiction. Get yourself something cool to drink, find a relaxing position, but before you continue, visualize the television photos of two jet airliners smashing into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and remind yourself this cowardly act of Muslim terror was planned for eight years.
While I haven’t yet reached the west coast I have arrived in America and its quite nice to be back. I’m still rocking the same clothes that I’ve been wearing for the past 60 or so hours. Traveling via military channels seldom goes without a hitch and I had quite a few.
I was scheduled to leave Iraq on a nice and roomy C-17. We got to the terminal 8 hours before our plane was scheduled to depart (standard procedure). We got on the buses when the time came for us to depart but were turned around halfway to the plane - our original mission time had been scrubbed due to a sand storm. It dashed our hopes of leaving on time. We waited for 4 hours after our plane was supposed to depart in hopes that the skies would clear - the didn’t. They sent us back to the housing area and told us that we should come back 12 hours later. A few hours after we got back they told us that our flight would be leaving in 6 hours - a full 6 hours early wahoo! It turns out that they lied - we ended up waiting 14 hours at the terminal for our plane to leave.
While there we experienced the ubiquitous indirect fire attack (they were shooting mortars at us). I was asleep on one of the benches as EVERYONE else in the room hit the deck and covered their heads when the klaxon alarms went off. I didn’t move and inch. I woke up a few hours later and laughed as they told me about what had happened. I laughed because its funny - really - it is. I guess you have to be a complete and total cynic to laugh at sleeping through a mortar attack. Truth is, I’ve slept through dozens of them and was fine. They can’t aim and the base is HUGE! The odds of probability were on my side.
So - eventually we got stuck on a C-130. I’ve got to say - worst plane ride ever. Most of you have been crammed into economy seats - these seats economy look like first class. In order to cram us all in we had to be creative. The plane had seats along the outside wall of the plane and seats in the center facing out - while seated you were facing someone else. In order to make the fit we had to alternate legs - your leg, the person across from you, your leg, another person across from you - I have a video that I’ll upload later when I have time (and I’m not paying for internet by the hour).
We got to Al Udeid (in Qatar) and we scheduled to come back to the terminal in 14 hours to catch our flight. We were supposed to meet up at 5PM. The time came near and we were told that we weren’t going to leave as planned. We were told to meet again at 5AM. We got to the terminal at about 0530 expecting to leave around noon. The airplane gods are a vengeful bunch and delayed our plane - again. Our departure time slipped an additional 3 hours. Oh joy!
I’m finally home and thats the important part - and - I’m only hours away from seeing my girl. I can’t wait.
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