Going to the Dogs

Noted: dogs like mud. They like a little mud, they like a lot of mud. I am fairly confident that given an unlimited supply of mud, they'd never again emerge into the light of day.

So I get home from work yesterday. Tired, worn-out, and I have to do some work on my front lawn. Yes, it was green when we bought the house last year, but that's because all the weeds and clover were pretty much green. I spent all last summer mowing weeds to keep them at a reasonable height, but the idea of mowing weeds offends me. I don't really like to mow all that much, and if I must do it, I want to mow grass. Nice green level suburban style grass. I'm such a Tool of the Establishment. What happened to the guy who used to dress up as Eddie and go to the midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show? Lost to Lawnboy, it appears.

The lawn. Yes, I wanted to rip it all up and start over last year - there are far more weeds than there is grass anyway. I was going to hire a bulldozer driver to come out and just scrape the top 10 inches of soil right off. Never got it done.

So this spring, I decided as an alternative to rent a roto-tiller and rip it up myself. Yes, I was going to till it all under and start over from scratch. Didn't get that done, either. Lazy, I guess.

I finally decided that I had to do something. Either I was going to have to mow weeds all summer again, or figure something else out. So I went over to Lowes and bought myself a couple of gallons of Bayer Advanced Southern Weed Killer for Lawns. Figured I'd kill off the weeds and keep what little grass remained - then encourage the grass to grow in the spaces where the weeds had been. It was a good plan.

Unfortunately, the Bayer Advanced yadda yadda weed killer didn't. Kill weeds, that is. If anything, they looked healthier. Happier. More at home. They definitely were enjoying it.

So I got myself some grass seed from Lowes, and a spreader. I also got some traditional 'weed-n-feed' for lawns - weed killer and fertilizer in one bag. I got one of those rakes that looks like the kind of detangling comb my mom used to use on my sister's hair until they'd cry, and it about as hard to drag through the lawn. But it removed the 'thatch' and whatever weak and puny weeds had actually succumbed to the lousy Bayer Advanced Lawn stuff. Took hours, I ended up with blisters. Mrs Wiggy bought me gloves, I wouldn't wear them. No, I don't want blisters. But men get blisters, they don't wear girly gardening gloves. I can't explain.

But finally, the weed-n-seed did it's job. The yard died. Very, very, dead. All but some tiny patches and islands of grass and a bit of crabgrass that apparently did a good enough job of mimicry that it fooled the weed-n-seed and was allowed to stick around. It looks like my yard has mange! Small patches of green grass, large areas of brown dead weeds and dirt.

So, with the grass seed down ('pencoated' so the birds won't eat it, hah), I have to water every night. We have a water spigot in the front yard, but it puts out like no water pressure. No idea why, and I'm not about to wedge my fat body under our house's crawlspace to find out. Like I could tell anyway.

That means I have to drag the hose around from the back of the house to water the yard. OK, so no problem. I do just that.

But the puppies (six months old now), whom we have deeded the back yard to - and they murdered it in their joy - have other ideas. Seems the hose has (had) a pin-hole leak. It sprayed a bit of water in the air. Whee! Good fun for puppies!

Mollie, who is definitely showing signs of being a Diabolical Genius, figured out that if she chewed on the hose where it was leaking, she could make the leak bigger. Ah, soon they had a nice fountain. Then Mollie (I saw her do it) figured out that she could grab the hose in her teeth and drag it so that the leak sprayed where she wanted it to. She found a low place in the back yard and directed the spray there. Soon, she had a small pond. And once she dug through the turf, she had a nice mudhole, which she proceeded to wallow in. And her brother Milo, who is bigger, stronger, and dumber than she is, merrily wallowed with her.

So now I have a pig-sty where my back yard used to be, and my front yard looks like it gots the mange, and my dogs are covered in mud.

This brings me to yesterday after work. Still with me? Good.

I get home from work. I unlock the front door. Go inside. The alarm is warning me that I have 30 seconds to punch in the secret code on the secret keypad (no, I won't tell you) or the central alarm boys call the local gendarmes and I find myself spread-eagled on my diseased-looking front yard pronto. As I begin to stroll through the house, with my mail in one hand, my empty lunch box in the other, our big orange cat "Diurmuid" (think "Dermot") greets me at the door and throws up at my feet. Not the usual "I'm hacking up a hairball-cough-cough-cough" thing. Nope, just a simple 'yack' and there's a pile of puke at my feet. Lovely.

I step over - noting that I have to clean this up quickly or the hardwood floor will be damaged. I deactivate the alarm. I clean up the puke.

The dogs, who are in cages (oops, I mean 'crates') in the kitchen, are going nutso. They want out NOW. I finish cleaning the goo up as quickly as I can, unlock the back door, and let them out. Mollie is so happy to see me that she proceeds to leap, as puppies do, up on me over and over again. Then she pees on my pant leg and my shoe. Sigh. Good doggie.

I clean myself as best I'm able, then I go out into what's left of our backyard to get the hose so that I can water what's left of our front yard. I use some of my photographer's 'Gaffer Tape' to try to fix the hole that Mollie chewed into it - the back yard has since dried to the consistency of a cement pond, so at least I don't have that to contend with, but I don't want to have a repeat performance.

I tape up the hole and shove that part of the hose under our fence that divides the front from the back yards. I figure that way, Mollie can't get at it even if it does leak a little. I position the sprinkler out front, and turn the hose on.

Well, I did an OK tape job. The thing leaks a little, but not bad. And the leak is on the other side of the fence, so Mollie can't get her teeth into it.

I go check on the sprinkler action in the front yard, then look in the fridge for a beer. Nope, we're out. So I have a Mountain Dew.

Two hours later...

Time to turn off the water, the yard's had enough. I go out into the back yard.

Oh, Dear Lord.

Mollie, that evil genius, has apparently figured out how to get the hose's damaged part back onto her turf again. She bit it and dragged it under the fence, (which moved the sprinkler, I've been watering our front porch, driveway, and car, for two hours), then she bit or ate the tape off the hose and proceeded to make the hole even bigger than it was before I taped it.

She has recreated Lake Muddy, and she has gone in search of the Loch Ness Monster, coming up with a reasonable facsimile in her own self. She is joyously, cheerfully, happily cover from head to toes in mud. Coated. Caked. And thrilled to see "Daddy," whom she immediately pounces upon. Milo joins in, similarly coated with mud and large enough now to knock me back a few feet when he jumps up and nails me with his huge paws right in the wedding tackle. Youch!

I am covered with mud. The dogs are nearly unrecognizable. The yard is a construction site, complete with a neighbor standing on a chair peering over the privacy fence at the spectacle. The city wants a construction permit if we're going to dig a pit more than three feet deep in our backyard, you could see the hole in our backyard from space.

I inform Mrs Wiggy, who begins to laugh at me. We grab the hose and hose down the pooches, which returns them to a state of cleanliness only exceeded by their wretchedness. They rocket through the house, leaving a trail of water behind them.

I am left with a back yard that resembles Farmer Brown's Pig Farm, a hose with a hole in it, and aching snarglies.

And no beer.

Pax,

Wiggy

Shut the Hell Up

The title of today's blog entry is "Shut the hell up," and it is reflective of the way I feel today. Fear not, my little droogies - I'll soon be back to my chipper self. But I've got to vent a little on y'all, so please don't take what I'm about to say too seriously...

To all you smug and smarmy conservatives - shut the hell up. Your simplistic world-view makes me tense, and your fear of the unknown makes me sad. President Bush is not an idiot, but neither is he the friend of the citizens of the US. He's going to destroy our liberties in some insane power-grab, and y'all are lining up behind him with grins on your faces as you cheerfully shred the Constitution in your zeal to catch them bad ol' terrorists. Thanks for wanting to protect America, now stop trying to do it by repressing our own freedoms.

To all you bleating, whining liberals - shut the hell up. Your shrill insistances are giving me a headache, and your blatant ignorance of the facts makes me want to throttle you. President Bush is a dangerous man, on that we agree - but he is the legitimately-elected US President; neither did he 'steal' any elections - the legal process was observed - you just don't like the results - too bad for you, get over it and get over yourselves.

And to all those who make sweeping generalities and the proceed with their rant as if it were true (including mine); shut the hell up. I'm sick to death of reading the following:

1) Anti-catholic statements that begin from the assumption that the Pope claims to be infallible or similar nonsense, and then jump off from there.

2) Gay Rights activists who paint the rest of the world as 'anti-gay' if we are not liberal crybabies like themselves.

3) Anyone who points to another group (religion, culture, skin color) and claims that the reason their own lives are miserable is because of "them."

4) Anyone who presumes I'm a racist if I don't agree with their point of view AND I am not the same skin color as they are.

I'm a member of the public who represents himself as what he is - a walking collection of often-contradictory beliefs - somewhat open-minded, willing to be swayed by logic and circumstances, aware that I have my own pet prejudices and beliefs that I can't explain or defend on a logical basis. That makes me a failure as an 'ism' and makes me a friend of no single pack of idiots with an axe to grind.

I call myself a 'conservative' because I find myself most often believing in the correctness of conservative opinion regarding economic policies, judicial interpretation of laws, our relations with other nations, and preservation of rights such as private gun ownership.

I am 'liberal' on some few matters - mostly those involving freedoms of speech, religion, and the general 'pursuit of happiness' as it involves issues like the rights of gays.

But I have to endure the conservatives referring to the liberals as all being anti-religious, pro-abortion, pro-gay-agenda, and so on. I have to endure the liberals constantly making asinine statements about what conservatives believe. Each side being earnest and each side being as close-minded as they accuse the other side of being, and each side being dead wrong.

And I'm tired of my gay friends insisting that I have to agree that it is 'good' to be gay, or that I must agree that they should have special laws to protect their right to be openly gay and legally protected from discrimination of any kind, and that I must agree that gay adoption is a fine thing, and so on.

Look, my cheerful friends. I like you just fine, and I love a few of you. You're my friends, and in some cases, my relatives. I'm comfortable with who you are, I'm not afraid of you, and I don't hold to any notion that you could 'change if you wanted to'. I don't think I can 'catch' being gay from being around you, I don't mind gay-oriented themes on television, and I don't think that gay people try to 'recruit' others to become gay. I don't think you're going to Hell, and I think society in general should treat you like any other citizen.

But I am against the government granting special protected status to anyone - and that includes gays. I am against gay marriage, because my religion forbids it - but I also think that the government should butt out, because it is no more my business whom you marry than it is theirs. I have my belief, but that's all it is - just an opinion. I don't insist anyone live that way. Yes, if you ask, I think gay sex is a sin. Just as much of a sin as sex outside of marriage, masturbation, and whatever else you kinky things get up to late at night. Again, I don't think it is any of my business what you do, and I think it is between you and your Creator to figure out for yourselves. I don't judge you - but I do have an opinion. I'll keep it to myself unless asked - but I expect you to honor my right to have an opinion that may not make you happy. So shut the hell up.

No, I don't think that society is going to hell in a handcart because of gays in society. Or television. Or movies. Or pornography. Or liberals. Or...you name it. And yes, I understand that the "Ozzie and Harriet" society we believed existed in the 1950's was never really any such thing.

But I do believe that our society is changing, and not for the better. I do believe (in the fiction, if you like) that a family is best served by maintaining the traditional organization of a man and a wife, a couple of kids and a dog, a station-wagon and a little rubber pool in the backyard for the kids to wade in. Sorry that doesn't serve your agenda. Sorry it never really existed anyway. Sorry I was raised to believe in a lie. It's *my* lie and I like it and that's what I want for MY life. Tell you what - I won't tell you that you can't live with three gay Romanian acrobats and a perverted horse, and you don't tell me that I can't have a house in the 'burbs with tulips pushing up through the sod in the springtime. We're both freaks - but I'm the more tolerant one. So shut the hell up.

Very few of us are 'isms'. Most of us hold viewpoints that cross political and religious boundaries. So you can't really say "Those XXX, they want to take away our right to YYY, and they all believe ZZZ." No matter what you fill in the blanks with, your statement is false on its face. When you say that, well, you're an idiot. So shut the hell up.

Anyway, I'm winding down now. I feel a little better. Just people, please...don't assume that anyone who belongs to a different political party or religion or whatever than you do must therefore have certain negative characteristics. I've even done it myself in this post - referring to liberals as whining crybabies and conservatives as smug and smarmy. While true in a very abstract way, it doesn't really apply to any single person. So I'm going to shut the hell up.

Keep Grinning,

Wiggy

More Songs About New Diseases

Nevermind "Industrial Disease." I've got 'Acute Necrotizing Employment Syndrome'. This job is eating my heart and gnawing on my liver. My pancreas is not in great shape these days, either.

Smooches,

Wiggy

My God, They Killed Santa Claus

Well, I can't help it. They've got him all dressed in red, he looks like Santa Claus without the beard and the reindeer.

Your Wigster is very sad - being Catholic. I think that Pope John Paul II was a good man, even a great man. As a good friend said, he was "a very decent man trying hard to do a very difficult job."

The Pope write several books. It has been pointed out by fellow blogster (and very clever person) Aunt Jenna that the very latest seems to have been written very recently. Perhaps more recently than possible?

Well, maybe he had a Holy Ghost Writer. Get it? Ghost-writer = Holy Ghost. C'mon...

And anyway, he's got fewer post-humerous books out than L. Ron Hubbard.

And one might notice that Rev Jerry Falwell is in hospital - any word in the news about that? Well not much, anyway.

All-around nice guy, the Reverend Billy Graham, is too ill to attend the Pope's funeral. Do you see the news guys camped out in HIS city/state? Oh wait, he doesn't have one, does he? Only the Pope.

I think this is some kind of marketing thing. Gotta be.

Brings back the wayward Catholics all around the globe - "Happy now? You killed the Holy Father with your sinning. Now get yer butt back in church pronto."

Sends a message to all religious fence-sitters. "Hey, look at us! We've got Jesus Cookies! We've got ONE BILLION members! We've got our own CITY/STATE! Dude, this is the religion for you! Catholicism is ready, ready to meet the new millenium, with the religion that fits your lifestyle!"

OK, I could be going overboard here.

Anyway, they started it.

And I'm sorry the Pope has passed away, really.

Dominus Vobiscum,

Wiggy