We took a walk through our neighborhood Sunday afternoon, and as we were making our way home, my girlfriend suggested we detour down a little-traveled street parallel to ours. We were approaching a house with a fence made of vertical bars around its perimeter when we saw a little dog running toward the corner closest to us. It started barking in a hoarse, pipsqueak voice, running from point to point along the fence, clearly rather put out by our presence.
We laughed a little. We both love dogs and comment on whichever ones we see when we're out. This one was some kind of bizarre mix, like a Yorkshire terrier crossed with a poodle or Brussels Griffon. It was really small—note more than eight pounds—and had curly hair that got in the way of its eyes. The little guy was a strange-looking dog, so we continued to laugh a little.
As we were passing by the fence, my girlfriend said to him, "Oh, you're so cranky!"
He redoubled his efforts, bounding around the front yard, barking up a storm, ricocheting off the fence and generally being pissed off. As we got toward the center of the fence, we were at our closest proximity to him. This infuriated him, and he turned to spin up another furious protest...and ran through what looked like a severely trimmed back, possibly dead rose bush. His barks turned to screams as a branch broke off and stuck to him.
Our smiles immediately dropped. He was yelping and still running around the yard, stuck between a V of branches with thorns on them. "Oh my god," my girlfriend said.
I tried to beckon the little dog over to the fence so I could try to remove the branch, but he wasn't having any of it. He was utterly panicked. We looked to see if anyone inside the house was coming out. Nothing. The screams were loud enough to start drawing the attention of the neighbors. We looked around and shrugged our shoulders, and I thought I was going to have to try to scale the fence to help the little dog. He ran around the corner of the house, still screaming bloody murder, and then it stopped.
"I guess someone in the house got him?" my girlfriend said, I think trying to convince us both.
"I hope he's not dead," I said.
We walked on, unable to really do anything about the situation. By the end of the block we were already chuckling about it, but we still felt bad.
Windows, Mac, Linux - What's your preference and why?
Submitted by ramblingsbymark.
I've used a Mac since my dad brought the little beige 128K Mac home in 1984. I used to go with him to Mac User Group meetings at UCSD, and fall asleep until the very end where they demoed shareware games.
I strayed around 2000 and bought a Windows laptop. Then I installed Linux on my old PowerMac. I hated both. When Mac OS X came out, I knew I had found home again.
The two key questions I asked my girlfriend on our first date were: 1) dogs or cats, and 2) Mac or Windows.
She answered both correctly, dogs and Mac. From there on, the only religious debates we've had have been actual religious debates.
No, not Vox. And no, not Trott. [1]
Voxtrot. As in that hip new brit pop band out of Austin, TX that sounds like Belle and Sebastian, The Smiths, and every other hugely adored indie band you can think of.
We bought tickets the day of, and fuck you very much Ticketmaster. Our $12 tickets each had $9.50 added in service charges. What, did you send an individual messenger to deliver each ticket to the Troubadour box office?
The show itself was quite good. We arrived while the band was just coming on. The place was packed, with everyone looking at everyone else and thinking, "I didn't realize this many people knew about them."
Their songwriting is excellent. Their showmanship will come in time. Lead singer Ramesh Srivastava has a great voice, though it lacks some polish and subtlety, he's got a good indie pop range. Really, the only problem I had was with Ramesh's exuberance. He's like the president of the student body, gangly arms gesticulating wildly during a pep rally for his band. You can tell he's smart. But compare him with Stuart Murdoch from Belle and Sebastian or with Morrissey, and there's a lack of restraint. He's smart, but doesn't come off as clever, because he's literally spewing everything he can think of in between songs.
Maybe enthusiasm is the new cool, and I'm just getting old. I just doubt that Morrissey ever announced the address of an after party during any of his sets.
[1] Dave gets credit for putting 2 + 2 together.
