Best quote ever on government-funded education

"The education of a free people, like their property, will always be directed more beneficially for them when it is in their own hands. When government interferes, it directs its efforts more to make people obedient and docile than wise and happy. It devises to control the thoughts, and fashion even the minds of its subjects; and to give into its hands the power of educating the people is the widest possible extension of that most pernicious practice which has so long desolated society, of allowing one or a few men to direct the actions, and control the conduct of millions. Men had better be without education—properly so called, for nature of herself teaches us many valuable truths—than be educated by their rulers; for then education is but the mere breaking in of the steer to the yoke; the mere discipline of a hunting dog, which, by dint of severity, is made to forego the strongest impulse of nature, and instead of devouring his prey, to hasten with it to the feet of his master." - Thomas Hodgskin, Mechanics' Magazine, 1823

The picture of a dog bringing a duck back to the feet of his master came from here. 

Kevin Is A Democrat. The dachshunds are Republicans.

Several years ago, my daughter, The Aggie, took in a Labrador Retriever puppy. 
She named him Kevin. 
As a puppy, Kevin was fine in her dorm room.  As a full-grown beast, he was a disaster. 
She brought him home from Texas A&M to live in Fort Worth.  He'll be in Fort Worth until The Aggie graduates - probably sometime during the Rodham administration. 

It took Kevin about 20 minutes to learn that he could jump the fence in our back yard.  So he lives inside my house. 
Yeah.  I have a Labrador living in my house, because my daughter who wants to be a doctor thought that he would be a good idea. 

Kevin chews things.  Garbage.  Clothes.  So he has to stay in the back bedroom during the day, or any time no one is around. 

Here's how I know Kevin is a Democrat. 

To get Kevin into the back bedroom, all you have to do is get a couple of doggie-treats.  He'll cheerfully give up his freedom and mobility to get the little freebies that go along with his regular dog food and water.  I throw the goodies onto the bed, he follows the goodies onto the bed and eats them, and I shut the door on him for the next 8 hours.  He has nothing to do but wait on manna from heaven.  He believes that food wouldn't exist unless his owners brought it to him.  Here he is in full dependency mode, sitting by the mailbox waiting on his check to arrive:

BTW, if you have 20 minutes to kill, I have an epic Kevin story posted here. 

The dachshunds in my back yard are all Republicans. 
Their goal is to keep the back yard safe. 
Border security. 
Day or night, if they see, hear or smell a squirrel, they're going to raise hell. 

If a someone pushes a baby stroller down the street, they're going to bark.  If someone rides by on a bicyle, they're going to bark.  If a jogger goes by, or god forbid, a cat, they're going to bark.  And bark.  And bark.  Until they die.  Intruder alert.  Intruder alert.  Intruder alert.

 
We've had several car and truck break-ins that they totally missed.  No barking.  No noise.  They were totally useless. 
But the dachshunds still go through the motions of doing their job.  Every 6 months or so, one of them will catch a squirrel, and the captor will carry the carcass around for days, acting like Janet Napolitano, saying "The system worked!  The system worked!"  Then they'll ask for more funding. 

The cats are all Libertarians, of course.  I have no idea where they are or what they do.  None of my business. 

Which candidate would never eat your dog?

David Huckabee, son of Arkansas governor and former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, once hung a dog and then slit its throat.   The governor had to pull some strings to make the story go away. 

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney once put his dog in a carrier, strapped it to the roof of his car, and drove 12 hours to Canada. 

According to his book "Dreams From My Father", our current Commander-In-Chief, Democrat Barack Obama once ATE a dog.  (Hit the link.  Please.  Then imagine The Teleprompter Jesus sitting down to a meal of Fido and French Fries.) 

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, in his last debate appearance as a Republican, quipped that "My next-door neighbor’s two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this president."

So let's be honest here....based on these anecdotes, which candidate would you trust with your dog? 

My vote goes to Gary Johnson !!

He would never, ever eat your dog. 

The picture of Obama's lunch came from here. 

If the economy is improving....

Here's Michelle Obama, speaking to some mannequins, clothes-horses and talking heads in Hollywood:

First Lady Michelle Obama cited "remarkable progress" on the economy during a speech for a small crowd of high-profile Hollywood names in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening.

"In the last three years, we've worked hard to get out of this mess and we've made some remarkable progress," the first lady told a group of about 135 supporters at a private campaign event for her husband. She listed President Obama's accomplishments on healthcare reform, the removal of troops from Iraq and the repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell" among other items on the list of "promises kept" touted by Obama's reelection campaign.

This is from the ever-cheerful Economic Collapse Blog, via a link from Instapundit:

When they try to convince you that the economy is getting better, ask them these questions....

If the economy is getting better, then why did new home sales in the United States hit a brand new all-time record low during 2011?

If the economy is getting better, then why are there 6 million less jobs in America today than there were before the recession started?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the average duration of unemployment in this country close to an all-time record high?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of homeless female veterans more than doubled?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans on food stamps increased by 3 million since this time last year and by more than 14 million since Barack Obama entered the White House?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of children living in poverty in America risen for four years in a row?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the percentage of Americans living in "extreme poverty" at an all-time high?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the Federal Housing Administration on the verge of a financial collapse?

If the economy is getting better, then why do only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of self-employed Americans fallen by more than 2 million since 2006?

If the economy is getting better, then why did an all-time record low percentage of U.S. teens have a job last summer?

If the economy is getting better, then why does median household income keep declining? Overall, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% since December 2007 once you account for inflation.

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by 10 million since 2006?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the average age of a vehicle in America now sitting at an all-time high?

If the economy is getting better, then why are 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida currently sitting vacant?

If the economy is getting better, then why are 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 living with their parents?

If the economy is getting better, then why does the number of "long-term unemployed workers" stay so high?

When Barack Obama first took office, the number of "long-term unemployed workers" in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.

But there is some good news.

When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today, the price of an ounce of gold is over $1700.

The era of great prosperity that America has enjoyed for so long is coming to an end.

In fact, our long-term economic decline is about to accelerate.

So enjoy this "bubble of hope" while you can, because it won't last long.

Lrdy, that was depressing.  Go to the Economic collapse blog to read their recommendations for your money, your business, and your stuff.

Here's a compilation of the world's funniest dog videos. I wouldn't want to send you out of here without some kind of mood stabilizer. 



 

Fred The Dachshund's Excellent Adventure

I recently got a call from the Cleburne Texas Animal Control Facility. They were asking if they could remove Fred, my dachshund, from their “Most Wanted” list. There’s a story there, of course.

It began several months ago when my friend Tanya called, inviting me to “Dachshund Day” in Cleburne. She knew that my back yard was full of the little beasts, and she thought I would enjoy the dachshund races, the dachshund costumes, and all the other events ill-suited for that particular breed.

First, some background on Tanya. She is probably the worst person I’ve ever known. Within six months of my starting a website, she dreamed up a parody site complete with caption contests, ill-tempered rants, and all the other things that I was doing online at the time. She posted under the name “Fembuttx”, probably because the name “Demon Spawn From Hell” was already taken. She and her band of harpies commented beneath every post that I wrote, doing their best to shift any discussions to their own voracious, perverted appetites.

That’s what she did when she was sober. Whenever she was in her natural drunken state, she posted countless pictures of male butt cheeks.

Although we no longer work for the same company, she now stays in touch by sending me unspeakable insults on Facebook Chat.

Tanya is also a Methodist grandmother.

For Dachshund Day, I selected Fred from the pack of varmints in my back yard. Fred has a good disposition, doesn’t bark much, and is named after the great French Economist Frederic Bastiat. Fred was the dachshund most likely to enjoy Cleburne.

For reasons that now elude me, I also took The Aggie’s yellow Labrador, Kevin.

Now a few words about Kevin…. Kevin is the only reason that I don’t believe in Darwinian Evolution. I refuse to believe that the collection of fur, slobber, enthusiasm and urine collectively known as “Kevin” is the end result of millions of years of natural selection, survival of the fittest, or gradual improvement. I think God created Kevin as a joke.

Maybe I thought that Kevin and Tanya would be a nice match for each other.

Kevin, Fred and I got in the truck and headed to Tanya’s house, where we were supposed to meet briefly before going to Dachshund Day. When I got there I discovered that…. a) there was a box truck in Tanya’s driveway because she was in the process of moving to a new home, and b) most of the people there were already drunk. I had anticipated the drunkenness, but not the moving van, and immediately wrote off all hope of making it to anything other than Tanya’s driveway.

I put Kevin in Tanya’s back yard, where he amused himself by marking every vertical surface as his territory. Since Kevin can climb a standard chain link fence in about three seconds, I was lucky that Tanya’s back yard had a very high wood fence - probably so her family can throw her back there to recover from serious drinking bouts, a safe place where Tanya won’t hurt herself or anyone else. Near the back door there was a concrete slab with a water hose, perhaps so they can strip her down and hose her off before allowing her back in the house to sleep it off.

Kevin kept trying to get through the fence to join us under the carport. He eventually wedged his head between some of the planks and got it stuck there, looking exactly the way he’s gonna look after he dies and I have his head taxidermied on a wood plaque over the television.

I met Tanya’s boyfriend Shawn, a nice guy who could probably do better. I met Tanya’s oldest son Jeffery and his wife Ashley. Jeffery is a bassoon player. (More on that later.)

Tanya’s youngest son Trevor was fascinated with Fred, so I told him they could go for a walk. As you might expect from a dachshund named after a libertarian demigod, Fred can’t stand being on a leash and doesn’t like being restrained. Trevor and Fred went off on a long, long walk. (Trevor’s walk was going to be a lot longer than Fred’s. More on that later.)

Tanya spent the next thirty minutes insulting me (unjustified) and Kevin (totally justified) because he had his head stuck in the fence.

Eventually Trevor wandered back up to the carport. He was holding Fred’s leash and Fred’s collar, but not Fred.

“Fred didn’t like the leash and he slipped out of it,” Trevor said. “He’s somewhere out in THE FIELD.”

At this point, I had been trying to catch up to Tanya’s and her moving crew’s beer consumption for at least 30 minutes. Catching Fred seemed like an easy task, best delegated to the young. I told Little Trevor that Fred was scared and that if he watched carefully, Fred would come back out, assuring Little Trevor that the dachshund’s loss was not his fault, but that God and all the angels would be very angry if Fred wasn’t located soon. Little Trevor ran back to THE FIELD to wait on Fred to appear.

Thirty minutes later, Trevor reappeared in the driveway, Fredless. But he had a little girl named Alissa with him. I patiently explained to Little Trevor that Alissa looked nothing like Fred, and described what type of animal I needed him to be looking for.

“This is Alissa,” Trevor said, looking at me like I was unworthy of dachshund ownership. “She lives near THE FIELD and she’s going to help us find Fred.”

Since we had recently spent a large chunk of money getting Fred fixed, and since the rest of my family claim that they can distinguish one dachshund from another, I decided I’d better go help Trevor and Alissa find Fred. To prepare for the journey I filled two hands and two pockets with Bud Lights so Tanya wouldn’t waste them on her own selfish self. I thought Fred might come out of hiding to see Kevin, so I undwedged his idiot Labrador head from the fence and let him come with us on the Fred hunt.

We walked several blocks and then we got to THE FIELD. THE FIELD is an unlikely 8-acre piece of land in the middle of Cleburne, covered with briars, weeds, stickers, brambles, impenetrable vines, and enough sand burrs to fill up a grain bin. It's not that different from the rest of Cleburne, really. There was a tree line on the far side of the field, and I knew that if Fred made it to those trees we’d never see him again. We went stomping across the devastation, calling Fred. Kevin was overjoyed to be in an unmarked 8 acres, obsessively urinating on every weed. I started cussing Tanya, Fred, Fred’s collar, dachshunds, Cleburne, Kevin, and THE FIELD.

We searched the whole thing as best we could, and then started criss-crossing all of the residential streets between THE FIELD and Tanya’s Den Of Iniquity, calling for my little dog. No luck. No dachshund. And my socks collected every cocklebur and sticker that they touched.

Trevor, Alissa and I gave up and went back to Tanya’s. Tanya had reached the bottom of the beer bins, but thankfully everyone was still fully clothed. I explained that we still hadn’t found Fred. Trevor looked like he was about to cry. Alissa told us how she would be willing to look for Fred all night if necessary. Tanya made snarky comments about what kind of person can’t come to Cleburne without losing his dachshund, but she eventually agreed to start a new search party.

“Allen….” Tanya said, with an evil twinkle in her jaundiced eye, “I hate to ask this, but….where is Kevin?”
I looked around, mentally going through every old Anglo-Saxon curse ever hurled onto a small Texas town. I had no Kevin. How in the heck was I going to explain the loss of not just one, but two dissimilar dogs under different circumstances within an hour and a half?   Don’t get me wrong….when The Aggie first told me that she had acquired a yellow Lab puppy (because no Texas A and M dorm room is complete without one) and then when Kevin wore out his welcome at every residence in College Station, and then when Kevin had to come stay in Fort Worth and live in the bathroom because he can climb fences, well….I’ve survived the loss of better things than Kevin.

But how was I going to explain to The Aggie that Kevin had gone to live with Puumba? (Read the Puumba story when time permits. If you’ve made it this far, you probably won’t mind wasting more of your life on the Puumba story.)

I did the only thing possible under the circumstances. I started rummaging through the empty beer coolers, looking for something, anything, anything alcoholic at all to take the edge off of the day. Against all odds, Tanya’s house was suddenly under Shariah law, with not a drop of alcohol to be found. I would’ve done the 1930’s wino trick of straining a bottle of shoe polish through a couple of loaves of bread. I would’ve fermented some persimmons if drinking the stuff could take me out of that horrible place and that horrible moment.

Alissa saved me from sniffing some cans of paint thinner. “There’s Kevin !” she said proudly.

Yep. There he was across the street, frantically writing “Kevin was here !” on all of my truck tires.

Alissa involved, problem solved.

So Tanya the nemesis, Alissa the little girl, Jeffery the bassoonist, Ashley the bassoonist’s wife, Trevor the Tanya larvae, Kevin the Labrador and I went back out into THE FIELD looking for my dachshund. If memory serves, Shawn the boyfriend followed behind us in his pickup, like the guy who walks at the end of the circus parade, cleaning up behind the elephants. If he was walking with us, I doubt that he admits it. I can’t remember.

I can only imagine what the neighbors thought, with that crew walking down their streets screaming “Fred, Fred, FRED !!!!” at the tops of their lungs. Night Of The Living Dead, but with less graceful zombies. Tanya continued her insults about dachshund loss and Kevin’s danger of dehydration from over-urination. I tried to insult her back, but throwing vitriol at that woman is like throwing snowballs at Frosty. It only makes you tired, and your victim grows stronger.

I was incredibly frustrated. I needed to be somewhere else in a few hours, I couldn’t find my dachshund, and it was all beyond my control. I couldn’t take it out on Tanya, for the reasons stated above. I couldn’t pick at Trevor for losing my dog – he was already in a blind panic. So when the going gets tough….pick on the bassoon player. I dipped into my deep reservoir of musician jokes.

Hey, Jeffrey, do you know the difference between a bassoon and a clarinet? No? Well, bassoons burn longer.

We got to THE FIELD and fanned out, trying to cover as much ground as possible, stumbling through the wasteland calling Fred. Bear in mind that this patch of Cleburne real estate was covered with briars and weeds and stickers. To avoid ripping our shins to shreds we had to lift each step about twenty inches off the ground. Cleburne looked like it had been invaded by Monty Python’s Ministry Of Silly Walks.

Tanya made fun of my walking method. I responded like the Communists did, not by attacking my enemy, but by attacking the children.

Do y’all know the difference between a bassoon and a trampoline? People take off their shoes before they jump up and down on a trampoline.

Neighbors started showing up with 4-wheel drives and pickups, leading me to believe that the Fred Hunt might be the highlight of the Cleburne Social Season. Tanya would introduce me as her co-worker who couldn’t keep up with his damn dachshund. Lord have mercy, she is one tiresome woman.

Do you know what you call two bassoons playing in unison? A minor third.

Jeffery the bassoonist took it all in stride, but seemed to be wondering what sins he’d committed in a previous life to deserve that kind of abuse. Ashley looked at Jeffrey like she was expecting him to do the right thing and kick my ass all over THE FIELD.  Little did they know that “the sins of the Mothers are passed on to the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:7) It was all Tanya’s fault.

What do you call a professional bassoon player who has broken up with his girlfriend? Homeless.

What’s the first thing a bassoon player says after he starts work? “Would you like fries with that?”

How do you make a bassoon player’s car more aerodynamic? Take the Domino’s Pizza sign off the roof.

How do you get a bassoon player off of your porch? Pay him for the pizza !

We walked THE FIELD a few more times over the next couple of hours. Kevin was joyfully urinating everywhere, claiming land like Columbus claiming the New World for Ferdinand and Isabella. Tanya never ran out of ways to enjoy my dilemma, or insult my dachshund containment skills.

How do you get two bassoonists to play in tune? Shoot one of them.

Define “perfect pitch”: The ability to throw a bassoon through a basketball goal without hitting the rim.

We got into nests of briars that could slow down Sherman tanks. Various Cleburnites criss-crossed THE FIELD in their SUV’s and pickups without luck. Because of them looking and sounding like a Mad Max dress rehearsal, and Frederic Bastiat’s legit fear of going back on a leash, I figured that Fred was putting as much distance between himself and that Methodist Scavenger Hunt as he possibly could.

It didn’t matter. Osama Bin Laden, a 6-foot, 7-inch diabetic Muslim in a turban, could’ve been sitting in the middle of all that Johnson County devastation, and we would’ve driven, hopped, stumbled and leg-lifted right past him.

We eventually abandoned THE FIELD in favor of canvassing the neighborhood some more. (If this had been an episode of “24”, we’d be at about the 2:30 mark.) I went up and down the residential streets hollering “Fred fred Fred fred! Fred!!!” with no luck.

And then I saw not one, but two dachshunds. Two of ‘em. One had a collar, and one didn’t. They were playing in a yard about three blocks down from Tanya’s house of ill fame. I sprinted down the block before they could run out of sight. One of them (the one with the collar) looked almost exactly like Fred, but on closer inspection, he wasn’t. Dang it.

But both of them were males! I could remove the collar from the brown one, Fred’s near-twin, put it on the blackish one, and take this brown one with me back to Fort Worth!!! I was sure that after a few days this beautiful new dachshund could be taught to answer to the name “Fred”.  If the real Fred were to turn up someplace in Cleburne, I was certain that he would eventually be taken to this lovely home since they would be the only people in Cleburne looking for a lost brown male dachshund. Fred would be joyfully accepted there. I almost got teary-eyed thinking of the possible ecstatic reunion this fine imaginary Christian family would possibly have with a dog that they had never seen before.

Hey, I don’t usually think that way, but at this point there was lots of beer involved.

That’s the plan that was going through my head when a pleasant elderly lady walked into the front yard of the dachshund house. The two of us shared an awkward moment, like when Cindy Lou-Who goes downstairs and catches The Grinch stealing all the Christmas presents. We discussed the merits and demerits of dachshunds for a few seconds before we got to the inevitable topic of why my shins and ankles were bleeding so badly. I gave her a capsule version of the Fred story, a shorter version I wish I could remember because it would’ve saved me from pounding most of the previous 2,715 words of this story (so far) into a laptop.

I limped back toward Tanya’s, totally defeated until some helpful soul told me of a rumor that Cleburne Animal Control had picked up a brown dachshund. This was great news. But until that moment, I had forgotten all about it being Dachshund Day in Cleburne, Texas. With my luck, there could be multiple lost Freds running around the Crystal Meth Capital Of North Texas, each with a Grinch-like owner more than willing to take Fred as his own.

I swapped numbers with The Dachshund Search Team, thanked them for their help, and Kevin and I drove to the Cleburne Animal Control Department. After a few minutes talking to the girl in charge, I understood that Cleburne Animal Control hadn’t picked up any lost dachshunds, despite it being Dachshund Day. No dachshunds. They had a ridiculous assortment of Rhodesian Ridgebacks and Great Danes. The rumor of Animal Control picking up dachshunds was obviously a clever ploy to get relief from searching THE FIELD, to get me out of Tanya’s driveway, and to make the bad bassoon jokes stop.

I imagined Tanya loitering around a replenished beer chest, bandaging bleeding shins and laughing at the thought of Kevin and me looking on the far side of town for a lost dachshund on Dachshund Day. After giving the Animal Control girl a description of Fred that was probably interchangeable with half the dogs in town, Kevin and I made the lonely trip back to Fort Worth. Fortunately, I was the only one home and didn’t have to explain my Fred deficit. I went to a party that night, totally distracted by thoughts of Frederic Bastiat lost and lonely in wilds of Cleburne.

Sunday morning, 7:00, Tanya left a message on my answering machine.

“Hey, douchebag ! Alissa found your damn dog. Call her. You won’t see my ass there because I’ll be at church.”

I called Alissa’s house and got her father. “Yessir, you wanting the dog that all the fuss was about yesterday?” he said. “She was up half the night trying to call him in. That’s a whole lot of work for not much dog. Yessir, Alissa’s got him for you.”

I thanked him at great length and told him that he had raised a fine daughter. Kevin and I got in the truck and drove back to Cleburne. Tanya’s house looked as empty and dark as her blackened soul, so we drove on to Alissa’s place. She ran out to meet me in her yard.

Alissa waited until I had thanked her multiple times before she let loose this bombshell: “I don’t exactly have Fred anymore. I caught him last night, but he didn’t like the collar I put on him and he got away again.”

How much of my weekend was going to be tied up in locating a dachshund? How many people were going to devote the rest of their lives to this project? It was amazing, simply amazing. My face probably betrayed my internal cussing, prompting Alissa to hurriedly add….

“But I know exactly where he is,” she said. “I’ve seen him twice this morning.”

“Wonderful. Thank you so very very very much. Where did you see him?”

Alissa glanced toward the undercarriages of all the vehicles in the yard, as if Fred might crawl out from doing an oil change. She gave a looked toward the house, an old pier and beam affair that might have a Fred-sized crawl space under the floor. She looked at a tree in the yard, as if Fred might pop out of the trunk like Minerva squeezing out of the mind of Zeus. Then Alissa proudly looked at me and said….

“THE FIELD !”

There comes a point in every difficult event in my life when I give up on accomplishing my goal, and concentrate on remembering all the details of the downward spiral so that they’ll make a good story. This was that moment.

Alissa, Kevin and I, the three remaining hardcore Fred hunters, went back into THE FIELD. All I wanted was my little dog. Keeping company with Kevin for 24 hours had confirmed Fred as my favorite. I knew that if Fred was nearby he could see me, even if I couldn’t see him. But he was afraid of the leash and wasn’t coming out. We spent another hour combing the Cleburne devastation, and then sat down on a fallen tree to take a breather.

That’s when I saw a brown spot bobbing up and down in the brambles off in the distance, 75 yards from the treeline. Could it be? I yelled for Alissa and Kevin to follow me and started running through the Johnson County wilderness toward the tantalizing little ball that was expanding and contracting over the tops of the vines and weeds. Every few feet, one of us would step off into a hidden stump hole or ditch and go tail over teacups into the vines and stickers. We didn’t care. It was Fred!!!

Do you remember the old cartoons of Snoopy jumping above top of the high grass, taking a quick look around, and then falling back to earth? That’s how Fred was negotiating the impenetrable vines and weeds. He was taking a running leap at each row of plant life, flinging himself over the top like a pole vaulter, snagging himself in the upper reaches of the vines and then falling to earth on the far side of the obstacles. He was getting closer and closer to the treeline, where he knew that his liberty-loving soul would be safe from the restraints of the Statist leash. We Three Amigos were at least 75 yards away.

I was stumbling every few steps and leaving Alissa behind, but didn’t care, closing the gap between The Quick Brown Dog Jumping Slower Than The Lazy Old Fox. Kevin was so excited that he kept up with me, which means he was leaving some tree stumps unmarked. But there was no way I could catch Fred in time. No way. I felt years, briars, and Bud Lights dragging me to earth. There was no way I could catch him.

We were 30 yards from Fred, but Fred was just 15 yards from the treeline and freedom, executing flawless weiner dog high hurdles. I was totally winded, thinking about giving up, and then….

In my mind, time slowed to a crawl. All I had to do was control the time/space continuum long enough to catch a dachshund. I could see individual gnats and mosquitoes hanging in the air, and if someone had fired a bullet in my direction, I could’ve reached out and grabbed it.  I was The Redneck Keanu Reaves in The Texas Matrix.  I saw Fred in slow motion, thrashing through the final row of briars, just a few feet from open territory in the Mythical Free State Of Cleburne. I went horizontal and launched myself at him with one final adrenalin-fueled effort, slowly floating above the stickers as they clawed holes in my shirt.

I reached for Fred’s back legs and caught them.

Time immediately shifted from “slow-motion fantasy” to “210-pound guy thumping to the ground” with his arms cradled around a dachshund. I pulled Fred to me and he gave me some obligatory licks on the face. He was covered with sand burrs and stickers, with a few vines were wrapped around his neck. The final indignity was a tiny wreath of vine “crawlers” perfectly wrapped around his little dachshund manhood.

I just deleted 4 consecutive bad puns about the wiener dog’s wiener. Be grateful.

By the time I carried him out of THE FIELD, Fred was asleep.

I thanked Alissa profusely, loaded my two mismatched dogs into the truck and headed back to Fort Worth. Unlike a lot of my favorite stories, this one doesn’t have a good punch line. I got my little dog back.

Well, there’s this. Flash forward about 6 months. One night Kevin and I had a running accident. Here’s what I posted on Facebook the next morning:

I took my daughter's idiot Labrador, Kevin, on my run last night. He saw another dog, tangled the leash in my legs and skidded me down the road about 5 yards. I've got road rash on both legs and I think I broke something in my left hand. Anybody want a dog?

This was Tanya’s immediate response:

At least when you don’t let go of Fred's leash, he just slips it and runs into briars. You have at least two stupid dogs. Was there a bassoon player?

I’m so sick of that woman. It’s too late now, but if I’d thought of it, I would’ve responded with the following:

Hey, Tanya !! Do you know why the Labrador and the Dachshund crossed the road?
To get away from the bassoon recital.

TRIP. Tonight. Rahr Brewery. 6:30.

I'm playing guitar and singing with Mike Coyne and Big Daddy John Spivey at the Rahr Brewery in Fort Worth tonight at 6:30. 
It's a fund-raiser for TRIP, the Trinity River Improvement Partnership.  You also get to see a documentary called Up A Creek, detailing the history of the Trinity River and the dangers of the current Trinity River development plan.  TRIP was set up as an alternative to the billion-dollar Trinity River Vision boondoggle set up by and for JD and his mama, Kay Granger.  I'm sure that I'll be posting more about this group as I learn more about it.  Hell, the Granger outfit has already doubled the size of the original budget.  (It's now up to something like 900 million.) 

I'm going to be doing some Buffet tunes, some Jerry Jeff Walker, and a few originals.  Spivey will be singing an original composition called "Mama Tried".  (Guess who that one is about !!) 

Here's the lyrics to one of the songs I'll be doing.  There was an old guy named James Cook who worked on my father's farm, and about three times a year he'd tell me about a little dog that helped his family get through the Great Depression.  I wrote this in honor of Mr. Cook, and his dog, and to get in a slam at Franklin Roosevelt. 
It's called "The Dog That Knew". 

"Back in the Great Depression, I made fifty cents a day,
Just digging ditches, picking cotton, or whatever else would pay.
Had a house full of kids, and couldn't keep 'em fed,
Every night we'd go to sleep, afraid we'd wake up dead. 

Well, one day here's this little dog like I have not seen since,
As if God had crossed a beagle with some kind of barbed wire fence,
And that little dog did something that I've never seen before,
He went and caught a rabbit, and then laid it at my door. 

Well, Daisy took that rabbit and she threw it in a pot,
Then we sat down at the table, thanked the Lord for what we got,
We thanked the Lord for sunshine and them children in the yard,
And we thanked God for little dogs that knew that times were hard.

Had that dog for seven years and Lord, he fed us well. 
That dog could bring a rabbit back straight from the gates of hell,
You see those rabbits ran like lightning up and down that river bank,
Sometimes they ran through gulleys that could scare a Sherman tank. 

And Mr. Roosevelt he said "It's only fear itself",
Well I bet Mr. Roosevelt had groceries on his shelf. 
They said it was a brand New Deal, that's all that some folks had. 
We had us a little dog that knew that times were bad. 

Well, Daisy took that rabbit and she threw it in a pot,

Then we sat down at the table, thanked the Lord for what we got,
We thanked the Lord for sunshine and them children in the yard,
And we thanked God for little dogs that knew that times were hard.

It's been forty years, I guess, since I first heard it said,
About that old man's dog and how it kept his family fed -
You see, my back yard's full of dachshunds, those useless weiner dogs;
Never caught a rabbit, and Lord they eat like hogs. 

Sometimes I'll take 'em huntin', and Lordy what a sight,
There's a man whose little dogs are scared that rabbits bite.
So if y'all see me looking like I don't eat enough,
It's because my little dogs don't know that times are tough. 

So y'all bring me a rabbit, and I'll throw it in a pot,
I'll sit down at the table, and thank the Lord for what I've got.
I'll thank the Lord for sunshine and those dachshunds in the yard,
But I'll wish I had some little dogs that knew that times are hard. 

Hope to see some of you tonight !!!

A poodle and Harry Partch

Here's a video of a dog singing and playing a piano.  I found it on Radley Balko's site.  If you want to get the undivided attention of every dog in your house, turn your speakers up and hit "play". 



Here's a video/recording of noted "serious" 20th century composer Harry Partch, whose compositions I had to study in college, and whose works are still performed by musicians who can refrain from giggling. 



I have no idea what I'm getting at by posting these. But when I heard the poodle playing the piano, it reminded me of Harry Partch.

What Am I ??

Picture compliments of The Whited Mama.

OK GO: White Knuckles - amazing dog music video

From Radley Balko's blog:
I bet you can't watch this just once ! 
Incredible. 

Lawyers to go on hunger strike due to lack of business

Recent law school graduates are going to stage a hunger strike to protest the lack of jobs in their profession. 

Can you imagine how popular that would be if the starving lawyers were on a webcam?  Go here to watch a damn divorce lawyer starve himself to death.  Hit this link to watch a politician saw his arm off.  Click here to see an IRS agent slowly die from carbon monoxide poisoning.   

The picture of the vicious attack dog came from here.

Bo Obama's carbon footprint

From the someplace in Maine Online Sentinel:

Arriving in a small jet before the Obamas was the first dog, Bo, a Portuguese water dog given as a present by the late U.S. Sen Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. 

Wait a minute....they White House has issued a clarification.  Bo Obama did not fly solo to the Obama's vacation site in Maine. 

Clarification: Today's story about the arrival of the Obamas said the Obama's dog and one aide arrived on a small jet before the First Family, but there were other occupants on the plane, including several other staffers. The presidential party took two small jets to the Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport in Trenton because the airport was too small to accommodate the president's usual jet.



Ah.  They took TWO jets.  The other jet was for the dog and some lackeys.  That makes it all better. 

In the meantime, keep an eye on your carbon emissions, double-fold your toilet paper, take your own canvas bag to the supermarket, and keep buying those inadequate spiral light bulbs.  The Obamas have a lifestyle to maintain. 

The picture of the biggest dog footprint that I could find came from here.  And it's really from a cat.  But it serves my purposes.  Kinda like the carbon emissions panic serves the purposes of our lords and masters in government. 

The Weekly Radley - They Shot The Corgi

From The Columbia Daily Tribune:

A SWAT team broke into a guy's home, shot and killed one of his dogs, and then shot and injured his Corgi (here's a pic of a Corgi)....

....but they only found enough marijuana in the home to file misdemeanor charges against the homeowner. 

Here's Radley Balko on the incident:

So smoking pot = “child endangerment.”

Storming a home with guns, then firing bullets into the family pets as a child looks on = necessary police procedures to ensure everyone’s safety.


Just so we’re clear.

Yeah, you can argue that the police were just doing their job.  And the courts, when they convict someone of marijuana possession, they're just doing their job.  So are the jailers, the social workers, the prison guards, the prison construction lobby, and the drug cartels that depend on our laws to preserve their monopoly.

When are we going to stop paying people to do this job? 

The Aggie Is NOT amused. I repeat, The Aggie is NOT amused.

I have a bathroom full of these things.
Dachshund puppies. Go here to see pics as newborns, go here for a week later.
They go into the bathtub when we're cleaning the bathroom floor, and they go onto the bathroom floor (yeah, they GO there) when we're cleaning the bathtub.



They've been fun, but it's now time for these guys to go. (All are now spoken for, BTW.)
This one was recently adopted by a Fort Worth couple. Mom works at TCU, and Dad does some kind of computer work near Dallas. Dad is a University Of Texas graduate, and is a diehard UT fan. Guess what they're naming their new puppy?

Colt.

Yeah, Colt.

The Aggie is NOT amused.

Pictures from a fun weekend

I took a lot of unrelated pictures this weekend, and thought I'd roll them all into one post:

I went to my sister and brother-in-law's house Friday night. Mr. Chen, the factory owner that I've worked with during 5 trips to China, was having dinner with them. Mr. Chen is a Tool And Die maker who started his own company in China almost immediately after Xiamen (his hometown) became a "Free Enterprise Zone". (Free Enterprise Zone is a term used in Communist China to designate places where people aren't starving to death any more. It's strange how the Free Market works, isn't it?)
And for long-time followers of this blog, Mr. Chen is the star of The Infamous Chinese Dog Story, an epic tale of death, destruction, and bizarre cultural differences that has been read and copied and emailed all over 6 continents.

Mr. Chen speaks almost no English. Here he is cooking scallops and signaling that he needs to find a urinal.

This is Nancy. Nancy is Mr. Chen's translator, Salesperson, Office Manager, and right hand. Nancy also had a small part in The Celebrated Chinese Typhoon Story.

I spent Saturday morning working at the Jukt Micronics New Everman warehouse.
Tommy, Joshua, and the crew have brought order out of chaos. NOTHING is out of place in this entire facility. NOTHING.

Saturday afternoon, I went to the Tarrant County Libertarian Meetup at The Flying Saucer in downtown Fort Worth. Michael Badnarik, our 2004 Presidential candidate, was there. And that's Stephen Smith, of the "Beginner's Guide To Freedom" blog, on the far right. Stephen is staring off into the distance, thinking of things far more brilliant than anything I'll ever write.

Stephen is, after all, from Jackson, Mississippi.

That's me, plotting rebellion and upheaval with Tarrant County Libertarian Party Chair, John Spivey.

Mandy the dachshund has been "great with child", to put it biblically, for quite a while. She decided to have 6 babies Sunday morning. I kinda had to help out with number 6, who was quite comfy inside his old resting place. Thought he was stillborn, cause he didn't move at all once he hit the great indoors. A couple of minutes passed by. I decided to let Mandy sniff him, etc., so she could see that he didn't make it.
Mandy licked #6 for about a minute and a half without stopping.
#6 woke up, lifted his head, and started sniffing around for breakfast. It's amazing how they just "know".

We let Mandy outside so we could count the puppies. 6 of them, and all seemed healthy. We let her in, and then watched some "Lost". I'm at the very beginning of Season 4, and I think the Island is the center of a Time Warp.

The Aggie and I decided to count how many boys vs. girls we had. We counted 4 boys and 3 girls. That couldn't be right, because we had 6 puppies. We counted again. Came up with 5 boys and 2 girls. (Their mother kept moving them around. That had to be the reason.) We counted again. It added up to 7. Mandy had pushed out another pup while we weren't paying attention.
Amazing.
I'm glad Mandy stopped at 7, because I think she only has place settings for 8. Woulda been crowded at the table.

It's strange how these tiny, delicate, effeminate, mewling, balls of life can grow up to be somewhat larger, delicate, effeminate, mewling, balls of life. I honestly don't know how I wound up with all these dachshunds. (Well, I know how I got the last 7. I just don't remember a conscious decision to fill the yard with them.)

Went to Boomerjacks in the old Montgomery Ward's area Sunday afternoon. There supposedly was a Cowboys game going on. I think the Cowboys won. This will only encourage Jerry to remain in place as G.M. Therefore, in the long term, this victory is a bad thing.

Other relapses were prevented. (Long story.)

When I got home, The Aggie had made a TCU pumpkin for my Paw In Law, who got his doctorate at TCU.

My Maw In Law countered with some ghost brownies.

End of weekend. It was a good one.

Caption Contest - More Dogs

I need a caption for this picture.


Harper won last week's Caption Contest, but with a different photo. First time ever.

Dog picture came from here. For a long, long conversation about this picture, go to Reddit.

Caption Contest - Critters on the deck edition

I need a caption for this picture

An apology to Savanna, and an attempt to make things right

My friend Michelle pointed out that in an earlier post about the Alan Ross parade in Dallas, I didn't include any pictures of "Savanna the Amazing Liberty and/or Gay Rights Dog".

The editorial staff, photography crew, and event planners apologize as individuals and as a group for this oversight.

Here's a picture of Savanna, taken shortly before we pulled The Alamo into a Starbucks parking lot.

Caption Contest - Spycam Edition

I need a caption for this picture, which may have been taken with one of the new spycams that concerned parents use to monitor babysitters.


Tarrant Liberty Guy, in a last minute effort, won last week's contest.

Caption Contest - I really can't describe this one

I need a caption for this picture.




vampE won last week's contest, simply because vampE's caption was the least insulting.

Yet Another Picture That I'm Posting Simply To Avoid Consecutive Posts About Southern Baptists

This is a picture of the most recent winner of the "World's Ugliest Dog" contest.