My Dogs are Dumb.

As if there isn't enough chaos in my life with two little kids, I am also the proud father of two dogs. Now, I love my dogs very much, they are great companions for the kids and for my wife and I, but I am sad to report that they are also some of the dumbest dogs in the world, and for those of who think the phrase "dumbest dogs" is redundant, I agree. Dogs are pretty dumb. Let me give you some examples.

Jasper is a 10 year old brown mutt. Amy got him after she graduated college and while I was still in college so she could have a companion while I was out fiddling around and drinking too much in the South Dakota prairie. Jasper was an orphan found roaming the streets of Duluth as a very young puppy. There were signs that clearly pointed to abuse in his former home. He also had kennel cough and dog pneumonia and he sneezed big green snotballs all over his paws every 5 minutes or so. Naturally Amy felt bad for him and bought him, and spent the next 2 months completely immersed in dog boogers. As we've found out, buying a formerly abused dog means that Jasper is really weird sometimes, which makes him prone to doing really dumb things like,

-Hiding under the bed for 36 straight hours because he got scared because I fell down the stairs, ass first, and yelled loudly because I landed on the hard pokey part of an extension cord.

-Being scared of flies- I think a fly must have bit him on the snout once, because every time he sees a fly he goes and hides under things and squeeks loudly, until I tell him to shut up or I will throw him in the dryer and turn it on.

-Barks ferociously in the pitch-ass dark middle of the night at nothing, which causes me to get worried that there are a pack of zombies surreptitiously sneaking into my house to decapitate me and eat my brains.

-Eats cat turds and then tries to come lovingly lick my face including the inside of my mouth.

-Barks for hours at Box Elder bugs that congregate on the west side of my house. Westside bitches.

-Sneaks away from me and runs aimlessly throughout the neighborhood and almost gets hit by cars in the process.

-Tears apart the garbage and drags it throughout the house including underneath small hidey-holes that are not easily accessible by people.

-Barfs in the corner all over the baseboards.

-Sneezes right in my face while I'm petting his belly.

So, because I'm an idiot who doesn't understand anything, I thought that Jasper would benefit from having a friend in the house to keep him company when we were at work, and that this would help him be more social and less apt to hide under furniture and woof at nothing in particular.

This led us to buy Polo, a big stupid Samoyed. Finding a Samoyed puppy was more difficult than I would have imagined, so we wound up driving out to some tiny town in the middle of Wisconsin to get him. He is a purebred Samoyed, AKC certified and all that good stuff, so theoretically we could show him at dog shows, if I wasn't convinced that he would eat other dogs and possibly smaller judges in the process. We bought him from a sort of Amish lady and her daughter, whose main ambitions in life were, as far as I could tell, being sort of Amish, and breeding Samoyeds. I say sort of Amish, because although they dressed in 1800's garb and talked with strange accents, they also had cell phones and computers and indoor plumbing and Jonas Brothers posters and stuff. Also, I didn't see them ever drink milk straight from a cow's teat, so that was another strike against them.

Polo obviously wasn't big when we got him, he was a tiny puppy, but very soon he grew into this big, puffy, poorly behaved monster dog, which I suppose is our fault for being bad dog trainers, but still...

Polo is very friendly, and I have to keep reminding myself that even though he's big, he still has a puppy brain, which makes him do dumb things.

So now we have two dogs, who are supposed to be best friends and all that, but really their entire relationship can be summarized like this:

1.) Polo runs over to Jasper and bites his face repeatedly
2.) Jasper hides under something and growls
3.) Polo is egged on by this, and tries to get him out, all the while barking a really annoying high pitched bark that we in our family refer to as "squeekbarking" (If you ever come over, you will hear the following command come out of my mouth at least 5 times an hour. "Polo, for Chrissake stop squeekbarking!")
4.) Jasper reluctantly comes out and lays down and growls while Polo chews on his head.
5.) Polo squeekbarks a lot and Jasper starts sneezing, presumably because Polo is chewing on his nose.
6.) I give them both chewies to shut them up for a minute
7.) Polo eats his chewie quickly and then goes back and re-starts the entire process.

After a while of this I get irritated and let Polo outside, where he proceeds to chase cars driving up and down the road and bark ferociously even though he's in a fenced in backyard and can't get within 40 feet of them. Then he gets tired and jumps up on the kids trampoline and falls asleep. ( A dog sound asleep on a trampoline is a sight to behold.) Then he wakes up and barks a lot at the air, or a leaf, or something else totally superfluous, so I let him back in and he tackles the children and steals their toys or underpants, and then sometimes he jumps in the bathtub and just hangs out in there.

Then we go to sleep, with Polo in our bedroom because if we try to kennel him up he shrieks like a thai hooker. At 5:14 am every morning, Polo wakes up, jumps on the bed, and licks somebody until they let him out. He has a very wide tongue that covers most of your face and it's very rough, like a cat's tongue, so it hurts a lot.

This is the routine in our family, and every day, I realize a little bit more that dogs are just dumb, but I'm probably more dumb for thinking having them would still allow for a peaceful utopia.

Brian has a Beef with Macy's.

Why is it that everything I enjoyed in my childhood is slowly being changed, or messed with to make it a shell of it's former self? It seems like people go, "Hey, there's something kids really enjoy, let's fuck with it and make it stupid." You can think of a lot of things like that.

-Merry Go Rounds- Not the ones with horses at the carnival, I'm talking about the ones at a park, where you'd hang on and the strongest kid would spin it around in a circle and then jump on and you'd get all dizzy and feel like barfing afterwards. That was awesome. But now, thanks to the Society of Super Cautious Parents, which I'm certain is a secret cult hell bent on taking all the fun stuff away, those are few and far between. Some dopey kid probably got stuck under one or something, and the SSCP went bonkers. Voila, no more Merry Go Rounds.

-Those things where you can hold on and swing across the park- Again, some idiot probably fell off and cracked his head open, and the SSCP had a field day. Stupid retard kids spoil all the fun.

-Halloween- Remember when you could just go out with your friends and get a little candy, smash a few punkins, and have a little fun. Now kids have this giant cadre of parents who come along, all with flashlights (heaven forbid your child is in the dark), and some of these people even dress up. (Newsflash: Halloween is NOT for you anymore. If you still crave Halloween so much, dress up as fat Brandon Lee from The Crow, and go to an adult Halloween party, get hammered, and ramble about insurance rates, and how big of a wheel you are at your job.) Then, the parents go through the candy with airport metal detectors and ration the amounts kids can eat. Whatever happened to eating candy until you felt sick, and checking for syringes in the goo goo clusters yourself? Kids don't want to eat cyanide either. I was fairly cautious about that, and the proof is that I am still alive today.

The reason I bring this up is because we took the kids to the 8th floor at Macy's to see the little Christmas show that Daytons first started back in the 50's, and has continued to this day, and also to see Santa Claus. The first thing I noticed, way before we even got there, is that Macy's has given up on this tradition. 50 years of happy kids, gone in the blink of a beaurocrat's pen. I know this because they mentioned that they were running the exact same display as last year, this boring nonsense called An Elf's Life. They tried to enthuse the masses by saying the display was "back by popular demand" which is a corporate euphemism for, "we don't give a shit about this long-loved, storied concept, and as a matter of fact we never took down the display from last year, so all we have to do is plug in a few things and now we want you to come see this half-assed knock off so you will pay us to see Santa, and hopefully buy things from our woefully overpriced Christmas store, and then go downstairs and choke to death from the scent of whore perfume we have emanating from all crevices of our space."

Needless to say, I went into our little journey with a slighltly jaded viewpoint. The first thing that bugged me is that no matter how many times I go there, I can never find the escalators. Somehow I always wind up in the underpants section. Then I have to drunkenly stagger around until either I accidentally find the escalators, or until my wife uses her built in homing device to point us in the right direction.

Once I've found the escalator, and done some swearing because it's so hard, I begin to notice that there is nobody there. This pleases me. Usually, the line wraps all the way down to the offices (which are dark and empty now which also pleases me. Eat a dick and go bankrupt, stupid Macy's), but in this case there was no line, so we paraded down the hall, past the elevators, which are not overflowing with angry people and wheelchair-bound kids, past the old retired ladies handing out booklets, and all the way into the display. This is all very pleasing to me. I don't have to wait in line, which is awesome, because I hate lines in the same fashion as I hate hornets, and because it proves that people aren't falling for the Macy's ruse. Stupid Macy's.

Once we get in the display I get annoyed again. An Elf's Life is configured about as stupidly as is possible. It's like Pablo Picasso designed it or something. The displays don't match up with the part you read to your kids. There was some garbled prose about the elves receiving lots of mail, and the display was of them going to elf school. So the message was really convoluted, and then every few yards or so, there was a real person dressed like an elf, that was running security detail or something for that small portion of the display, making sure kids weren't touching the bogus snow and things like that.

We also noticed that some of the "elves" in the display were actually just regular people from displays past that had been sawed off at the knees to make them look little. I swear to you that one of the elves near the end was actually the Godfather from "The Nutcracker" whose legs had been sawed off. You can't fool me, Punk Ass Macy's.

Finally we got through that mess, which was appropriately about half as long as the good displays Daytons used to do, and went to see Santa. Again, there was no line, which ruled, because I didn't have to worry about the kids running amok and bumping into people in front of us, and when we got done visiting Santa (who was criticized by my son for not getting him the right stuff last year, much to my surprise) and getting the hard sell by a 17 year old to buy a large quantity of Santa pictures and frames, we went over to buy Gingerbread Men (which we always do even though I don't like Gingerbread Men that much). At the Gingerbread Man station, we got the hard sell from the Gingerbread Man baker (what is it with the hard sell? Merry Christmas to you too, buttlicker.) who tried to sell us Gingerbread Men in bulk, and remarked what a bad deal we were getting because we only bought 3.

As we sat in an empty stairwell, eating our Gingerbread Men, two words kept running through my head, over and over, like the gears that made the elf/Nutcracker Godfather move. Screw Macys, Screw Macys, Screw Macys........

One post-script: I nailed a lady really hard in her ample buttocks coming out of the bathroom with the bathroom door. She looked at me like it was my fault. Why would you hang out in the indentation leading into the men's bathroom? That's a good way to get nailed in the butt if you ask me.

The Schwann's Man: A Tale of Heartbreak

There are a lot of things that really bother me in life, but I hold a special hatred for a chosen few punk ass irritating things like Hornets, Dog the Bounty Hunter, Roundabouts, Jimmy Fallon's monologue, muumuus, crocs, not being able to see your own butt without a house of mirrors, you know stuff like that.

I also reserve a special hatred for the Schwann's guy. Now most of my hatred I've come up with on my own, but the Schwan's owns a special place, for this is an inherited hatred, one I picked up from my Dad, and low and behold, I've found that this animosity is well deserved.

Let me take you back to 1986, when I was a fresh faced youngster, happily naive, with no trace yet of any of the sarcasm and cynicism I would later develop keenly. The Schwans man would come by and although we didn't have a lot of money, sometimes my parents would indulge me with some little circular pizzas, or dreamsicles or something. It was a happy time.

The Schwan's man's name was Brian too, and although it was likely that he was a recovering crackhead with an eye for young boy butts, because we were both Brian's, we had a bond.

Everything changed one dark and stormy night. Brian came over, and was being sort of insistant that we buy some goods from him. We had just gone shopping and we didn't need anything. Come back another time right? Nope, instead Brian fired off this query which altered the course of history.

"Whatsa matter Mr Jensen, can't afford a few treats? Having job problems?"

The nerve of this idiot to pry into other people's personal business. We just didn't want your food. My dad told him, in no uncertain terms, to leave, and I never saw Brian again. I would assume that he drifted into a life of rampant drug use and gay prostitution, but who knows; he could have become a clergyman.

Fast forward to 2005. I am now a grown man (in age, not in maturity) with a wifey, a house, a dog, and a baby girl. The American dream right, except that I don't drive around in a big van solving mysteries. I guess you can't have everything. Anyway, the Schwann's man reappeared into my life. I was a little apprehensive after how badly I'd been burned 19 years earlier, but decided to give it another shot. I was happy. I had my little circular pizzas that always burn the roof of your mouth no matter what again.

But, as it always is with the Schwann's man, the relationship went south faster than a preppy white kid who kills his wife. First he just stopped showing up. This was odd. After about 3 months of no-shows, he finally appears again, like nothing had happened. This is akin to a relationship where a dude disappears on his girlfriend and goes and humps everybody for a while and then comes back and tries to pretend she's the only one for him because he needs money.

I am not fooled. I tell him I'm not interested in his little pizzas anymore. Unbelievably, I get nearly the same response as my Dad had gotten 19 years earlier.

"Whatsa matter Mister Jensen, little short on funds this month?"

What the fuck is up with these people? Is this like, a strategy they teach at the Schwann's Institute?

Rule #1: If a customer refuses to pay you 7 bucks, tease him about his financial situation. It may also be helpful to insinuate that you've seen him at the welfare station

Rule #2: Have sex with his pets when he goes to the bathroom.

Seriously, to all the Schwanns people reading this, the whole issue is customer service. I can buy pizza and popsicles at Cub Foods. If you can't be conciliatory when I turn you down over 7 dollars worth of groceries, then please don't approach me in the first place. Walk back to your freezer with wheels, and go peddle your wares elsewhere. Thanks.

P.S. Don't have sex with my pets either!

I get myself in trouble in the bathroom

Here's something I bet some people have done before. The other day I was in the bathroom at Target, in the stall, just minding my own business, and trying to ensure that nobody accidentally walked in on me or tried to Larry Craig me, when I started thinking about this morbidly obese man I had recently seen. He had a red sweatshirt, red sweatpants, and was wearing a red stocking cap. He looked a lot like the big Kool-Aid mascot guy, the one that used to crash through the wall in commercials.

The more I thought about Kool-Aid man, the funnier it became to me, so eventually I started chortling and eventually laughing out loud, alone, in the stalls of Target.

Now of course there's like 3 people milling about outside the stall at this time, peeing or washing their hands, or doing drugs or whatever, and all the while there's some weirdo in the stall giggling.

When I think of it in those terms, I immediately stop laughing. I am overcome with a completely rational concern. My concern is that the people outside the stall will hear me laughing and think that I am laughing at my own poop. I don't want people to think this, so I start to cough to try and convince all the random people that the laughter they heard was actually just a weird form of coughing. I don't think they are convinced. Now I am embarrassed so I remain perfectly still and I pick my feet up so nobody can see me. I will do this until everybody leaves. But they don't leave quickly enough because some other guy comes into the stall next to me and it sounds like an army is marching out of his butt.

I am faced with a serious dilemma. Do I stay in the stall and listen to the butt symphony going on next to me, or do I leave and risk the people who think I laugh at my own turds seeing my face. I decide to leave. I stand up and realize that one of the people in the bathroom is the really fat Kool-Aid man who I was laughing at in the first place. I decide this is a good omen. Just for the record though, I don't think my poop is all that funny. Maybe mildly amusing, but only if it's an odd color.