THE LOST DOGS OF LANGSTON.

Entry 18.

So on the news on NPR this morning (I haven't been listening a lot lately but I turned it on for the dog (Angelo) and my old friend Debbie Elliott was on and they were talking about the vaccine so I tuned in and immediately started arguing aloud with whatever the guest was saying) (oh lord that's a double parenthesis right there, or double parentheses, as the case may be) (arguing aloud, as I do, mainly quibbling over the finer points of language and neurolinguistic programming, et al)

they were saying, after the vaccine article had gone and they were up to the headlines,

"This week's mass shooting..." yadda yadda yadda

and I was thinking, we're all like a bunch of mice in an aquarium that have overbred and now we're just cannibalizing each other. This week's! Like there's gonna be one every week now? It's just, like, a thing now? Blink, yawn, this week's mass shooting, oh okay, yadda yadda yadda?

That's what mice do. If there get to be too many of them, you will come home in the afternoons after work or from wherever it is you've been and look in the aquarium or the mousequarium or whatever it's called, and see little mouse parts all over and there will be fewer actual live mice than there were before. They cannibalize each other when resources and space get scarce.

Thanks to Bright Lights, Big City, that book by Jay McInerney, that allows me to write like this. SO good. Lotta good stuff coming out of the eighties. I say it like it's still happening.

Because in some parallel universe somewhere, it probably is. Even if it's in your mind.

So really, Tommy Tuberville and Richard Shelby and Mo Brooks oughta be ashamed of themselves, all those letters I"ve written them about the dogs and the situation out here and how we need help and legislation to help them and they have not made the move to visit me and Roscoe and Roscoe's cadre ONCE, not ONE TIME have they asked for personal appointments with us to see how the situation is. And that's the kind of stuff senators and representatives are SUPPOSED to do, right? I mean, aren't they working for ME? And that little crosseyed dog that is obviously inbred, well he's out there humping his sister right now on my front lawn, it's more scandalous than that Cesaire woman and her paramour what's-'is-name ever will be, it was the father dog that was humping her yesterday!

Right here on my FRONT LAWN!!!!

I mean if that's not scandalous enough to get someone's attention, I don't know what is. "Someone," as in some major help from some major folks.

And so that shooter guy hasn't called me back yet, so I guess he's either out of the country or doing his National Guard service or something, or maybe he died of the covids. Jesus I hope not. I need his help. If he can't shoot Roscoe with a stun gun so I can take Roscoe to the animal doctor and put his rather-large-and-perhaps-even-inbred-puppy-making days to an abrupt end, then maybe he can at least tell me someone who can and their phone number.

One may hope.

Or maybe he thinks I'm crazy. He met me at the restaurant down the way in 2019, I am sure I was nice enough at the introduction. I believe I shook hands but I might not have. He knows who I am, this is a very small town.

VERY SMALL. And dogs are taking over, and they're gonna cannibalize everything if we don't do something to stop it.

I realize this is rather a grim post, with cannibal mice, inbred dogs and lurid senators and representatives all over it. Don't you have something nice to talk about?, you may ask.

Yes. In fact three lovely purple irises are blooming inside my front fence. Miss Ilene's purple irises and pink azaleas next door are blooming also and they look beautiful. I was able to deliver her popcorn to her in a chair up on her porch yesterday and she got it successfully without the dogs intercepting her. In about two weeks and two days, we will be able to visit outside, according to my rules for personal house arrest that I've imposed on myself due to viruses and things which make me fearful enough to be very very cautious. But as you can see I put the fear where it's supposed to be and just get on with my life, as I am doing here.

Don't eat azaleas, they're poison. Don't let the cat eat them either, or lilies, lilies are poisonous to cats.