The Perils of Halloween

The local radio stations keep playing Michael Jackson's Thriller over and over again. Why wasn't that one on Blender's list?

Trigger-Happy Pooches

A report from Yahoo! indicates that a pack of Iowa hunting dogs opened fire on their master (or as PETA would call him, their domineering enslaver). No word yet on whether the dogs were Dick Cheney's.

Now, the real problem with this whole scenario is the word "dogs." The article states that the "dogs" stepped on the gun, causing it to fire. Unless these dogs have extremely tiny feet, we are really referring to one dog, no doubt a radical troublemaker.

I suppose it is possible that the other dogs may have quickly gathered around the gun to protect the guilty party, or that all the dogs wanted a shot at this poor bloke and only one was "lucky" enough to get his paw on the trigger. However, I can't see this being a "Murder on the Orient Express" sort of denouement, given the relative inability of dogs to get together on so much as a plan for nicking a bone¹.

So, how to find the single, guilty dog? First off, look for the one named "Lucky."

No "Lucky?" Then we need to rule out any kind of radical sympathies. Were any of the dogs named "Adolf," "Osama," "Che," "Josef," or "Donny²?" Did they have swastika tattoos or wear burkas with bomb belts? Probably not, as any tattoos would have been the owner's choice and if you've got a bomb belt underneath a burka, you're probably not keen on mucking about with a large, unwieldy shotgun, especially given the lack of opposable thumbs.

You may argue that dogs are simply not malicious enough to fire a gun at a human. You probably believe all that claptrap about man's best friend and dogs loving people more than themselves, despite the poop. Remind yourself of that the next time you're eyeball to eyeball with a snarling Doberman, if it's not already munching your eyeball.

I suspect our own dog would shoot me in a second, given the chance and the brains. Fortunately for me, she currently and irrationally fears me so much that she would have to shoot me from an adjacent room with the doors closed, which would give me a fighting chance.

As for the Yahoo! story, in the end, it may simply have been a case of dog stupidity. Let's face it, the dog(s) hit the hunter in the leg. Their eyesight is so poor, even a scope wouldn't have helped, and their idea of good aim it to stand perfectly still and point to gamefowl with their noses. If the idea was just to wing him, then what next? Hostage demands? Waterboarding? A quick round of poker?

Indeed, the most likely "accidental" possibility is that the dogs mistook the gun for a large chew toy.

There is one other possibility. The hunter was going to pick up a downed pheasant when he was shot. It could be that an enraged bird quickly landed, set off the gun, and they dashed away to leave the befuddled hounds to take the fall.

Now this is a theory I can buy into. After all, they are out to get us, and they know we have the advantage.

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1. See numerous Warner Brothers and MGM cartoons for evidence of this evolutionarily dim trait.

2. You'd be surprised.

RE: Hollywood = America's Angriest Rage-Hole

Someone have a script go into turnaround again, did they?

Either that or he's suicidal, calling out Chuck Norris like that. Chuck may be eighty-five but he's still the answer to the question: Why do giant redwood stumps have rings? (Full answer: They didn't before they were knocked down by a Chcuk Norris roundhouse kick. The rings are the burned in residue of the roundhouse kick energy.)

Oh, and if you're keeping score Mr. Norris, I'm pretty sure "Excremando" is a direct reference to you also. No need to thank me, just don't kill me.

Hollywood = America's Angriest Rage-Hole

Everyone in Hollywood is angry.

Well, everyone except perhaps Warwick Davis, but he's actually in London. He only left his heart in Hollywood (in a glass display case at George Lucas's house, to be exact), so he doesn't count. Other than Warwick Davis's happy heart, however, every single person in Hollywood is angry. I don't know if all the botox corroding their emotion centers is making it happen, or if Jack Nicholson is personally and deliberately (and intentionally) enraging every single person in Hollywood, but it's happening.

You probably don't believe me, Mr. or Ms. Blog-Reader, because chances are you hold onto the happy delusion that Hollywood is a cinnamon-scented wonderland of toe-prancing make believe artists with lollipop eyes and balloon animals filled with their own colonic gas roaming begonia-steeped yards hidden behind cotton candy colored marble walls. Well, it's nothing like that. Instead, if you want to more accurately envision what Hollywood is like, picture a festering black hole full of rotten lamb corpses, ziploc bags full of maggot-infested hamburger patties and a big old pile of blackened and sun-swollen tripe oozing a thick oily discharge. That is the emotional picture of Hollywood.

It is a place where Shatners mock snivelly cream-bearded stick-leg corner dwellers, where the Orson Welleses make brutal fun of snow peas in a verbal manner not unlike beating a bag full of puppies with a giant tube of soft but still painful bologna, and where even the venerable and shirt-eschewing Casey Kasem will drop kick your mind like a 400 pound morbidly obese Chuck Norris with a fist full of Ding Dongs leaping from a water tower on top of a table covered with tiny, delicate sparrows. That is what Hollywood is like, grandma, so drop your illusions and sweep them away, sweep them out the door the way you swept grandpa out the door after that incident in Houston with the pills and the weird locked door. Hollywood does not love you, it does not love me, and it most certainly does not love itself. Even Jack Palance, the epitome of gnarled old bits of dried up sassafras roots, yes, even he will take a jagged piece of glass to your dignity and slash it down the center like a flu-ridden horse leaping into the grandstands to escape the wrath of Seabiscuit after an all night bender at the Waffle House eating tainted oats.

What I'm trying to say, Mr. and Ms. Blog-Reader, is that Hollywood will not make your dreams come true, and even if it did, which it might, it will only sour you up like a lemon rind dipped in grapefruit oil and rolled around in earwax.

That's all I'm trying to say.

Well, except that Jorge and Excremando both smell.

Oh, and also, I'm Five Times Better. There, I said it, DING!