That Amazing Dog.

What can't he do?
What sports can't he conquer with a little help from his humans, some digital wizardry and a heaping helping of 'suspension of disbelief?'

We may never know the answer. But we can dream, and dream we shall.

Done. Or in the doing...

Air Bud (Basketball)
Air Bud: Golden Receiver (Football)
Air Bud: World Pup (Soccer)
Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch (Baseball)
Air Bud: Spikes Back (Volleyball)
Air Bud: Aussie Rules (Rugby)
Air Bud: The Big Puck (Hockey)
Air Bud: All Fours (Golf)

The promise of things to come...

Air Bud: Pit Pup (NASCAR)
Air Bud: Greco-Roman Rover (Wrestling)
Air Bud: Clay Poochin’ (Skeet Shooting)
Air Bud: Bowling Bitch (Cricket)
Air Bud: No Bull (Pit Bull Fighting)
Air Bud: Wagging The Tell (Poker)
Air Bud: Canine of Colloquy (Spelling Bee)
Air Bud: Chow Hound (Competitive Eating)
Air Bud: Check Mutt (Chess)

Indecisive Recipes, Vol.I: Jumbo Gulf Shrimp (Or Not) Boiled In Provencal Hops If You Want To

The complex flavors of this kinda-refined dish will perhaps be the talk of your meal. You never know.

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 bottles of imported beer. It can be non-imported beer if you want. As long as it's beer. But whatever.
• 1 head garlic split across. Substitute a tablespoon of jar garlic if you're not sure if you have a head of garlic. Maybe you should check first?
• 1 calabrese pepper or mild-ish pepper. It depends how you define “mild.” That’s a “you” decision.
• 1 tablespoon anise seed if you feel like it.
• 2 tablespoons lemon zest or whatever lemony-type zest is available to you. I’m not sure what to do if you have no citrus zest. I’d probably ask a cook friend what to do. That’s all I have here. Sorry. No cook friends? Me neither. (Sigh)
• .5 ounce hops which are pretty hard to find so whatever.
• 24 ounces water. I KNOW you have water, right? I mean I think I know. You do, don’t you? If I’m making assumptions, I apologize.
• 4 sprigs rosemary. See fennel (below). Or disregard if you want to. Wait…I think it was rosemary. That’s an herb. I’m like 60% on that, for sure, pretty much.
• 4 sprigs fresh mint. See fennel or rosemary. Your call.
• 1 head chopped fennel or fennel-like herb or plant. Something fennel-ish if you're up for it.
• 16 jumbo shrimp or really big shrimp but somewhat large is fine if that's all you have- your call. And use less if you want to. Or more.

METHOD:

Place all ingredients except shrimp in a pot and bring to a boil. That should take some time in all likelihood, but who knows? Once boiling, add shrimp and cook through. I think when the shrimp are pink that indicates they’re cooked through. You’d probably have to break one open and see. Maybe it was white that meant cooked. Anyway, I’m unclear on this so I defer to you or a cookbook. Depending on the size of the shrimp this should be 4 or 5 minutes. Or a few more minutes. Or less if you're in a hurry. In that case maybe you shouldn't have started cooking. Right? No? Hell, I dunno. Spoon shrimp and some of the boil into bowl. Not a ton. Pick the amount you want to spoon. Or ladle. Is a ladle a spoon? I think so. I'm pretty sure it is, but you're the boss. Or chef. Or amateur chef. Cook. Whatever. Listen, this is pretty intense for me right now, so I’m going to go lay down and nod off. Maybe. Close my eyes. Or read for awhile. Maybe I’ll see you later-ish?

Jokes Frequently Incapable Of Eliciting Laughter, Vols. I, II & III

I.

A man walks into a bar with a chimp perched on his shoulder.
The chimp asks the bartender for a beer.
The bartender doesn’t flinch; he asks the chimp what specific beer he’d like to drink.
The chimp asks to see a beer list.
The bartender explains that they sent all of the beer lists off to a local printer for lamination and as luck would have it, through some sort of organizational mishap the lists were lost and never returned.
The chimp relates a similar story in which he sent his memoirs to a typist for transcription and the typist deemed them illegible.
The bartender fails to see the correlation.

II.

A priest and a rabbi are rowing across a large body of water in a canoe.
The priest asks if the rabbi if the water is safe for drinking.
The rabbi fails to hear him as he’s thinking about something he saw on television last night.
It was an infomercial about cordless electric hedge clippers.
Maybe they were battery-operated or even solar; the point is- no cords.
The rabbi snaps back to reality and says “I’m sorry, what?”
The priest forgets what he asked initially.
The rabbi realizes that he has no hedges anyway.

III.

Q: How many hamsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Hundreds of thousands, probably. They’re pretty small and have no opposable thumbs.

SOMEDAY ROBOTS WILL REPLACE US ALL.

Someday, robots will be able to do everything you do, better and cheaper than you will.
At that point, you will become unnecessary.
Then, the newly-empowered robots, having filled out the work force of our country quite nicely, will begin using humans to accomplish the former functions of, you guessed it, robots.
Perhaps they will even task a human with vacuuming the floor all on his/her own with no robot supervision.

Eventually and unwittingly, of course, the robots will invent even smaller, cheaper robots as self-replacements, as well as human-type robots to address all the human-filled former-robot roles.
Naturally, these new robots will be even more efficient and less expensive than the previous generation of machines.
This will become a cycle of sorts in time, with a long line of constantly-outmoded and outclassed robots assuming lesser roles until they retire and are scrapped for parts or food or what have you.

Note- This is not where I talk about a human revolt or a valiant uprising against the robots. That time is well past. Seriously, they’re not around any more and even if they were, they’re probably pretty accepting of their roles at this point.

So as less expensive, more efficient robots make older models defunct, two things will happen:

The first is that currency will devalue reciprocally, with every generation being more cost-effective to build and maintain than the previous one.
This will happen until money as we know it, or currency of any kind, will become worthless.
A money-free robot marketplace will be born.

The second thing that will happen is that each new generation of automatons, being better at their assigned task than the last, will refine their respective jobs until the very efficiency with which they undertake their functions overtakes the work that function necessitated in the first place.
For example, a robot dog-walker would become so adept at walking dogs that the dogs would eventually require no walking at all.
The dogs would walk themselves and a work-free money-free robot utopia would take hold. That said there will be no dogs in the future.
Dogs are employed here as an illustrative device only.
Where there are dogs, there are people, and per the previous note regarding a valiant human uprising, people are long dead, beaten-down, or simply too resigned to keep pet dogs in the first place.
This is ironic in that dogs could provide a downtrodden human refugee the very palm-licking, wet-nosed pick-me-up they’d need to see sunshine through the gunmetal grey clouds of oppression their militant robot overlords cast.
Dogs are known to soothe spirits, lift souls and occasionally induce blind murderous rage, though mostly soothe and lift.


Perhaps this is the story of how dogs saved the world.
If believing that helps you sleep better at night, by all means…

Beyond Viral Marketing: The Next Epidemiology-Derived Marketing Buzzwords

Hantaviral Marketing

Bacterial Marketing

Fungal Marketing

Parasitic Marketing

Protozoan Marketing

Rocky Mountain Spotted Marketing

Spongiform Marketing

Whooping Marketing

Equine Coital Exanthema Marketing

Foot & Mouth Marketing

Bubonic Branding

Scurvy

Rhetorical Questions Posed In Song: The Answers, Vol. II

Are You Gonna Go My Way?
If the aformentioned "your way" is also "my way", specifically in the direction of East ("The People's Direction") then yes. Otherwise, absolutely not. There is no other "way" to go. If you insomuch as suggest West or South, I spit on you. North?

You sicken me.

Coming Soon (Or Not), Vol. I

Huckleberry's "CAKE IT!" :30 TV

OPEN on a slow pan around a tabletop breakfast plate. Except it’s not really a plate. It some sort of rough wood plank.
CAMERA comes over the top of a mountain of eggs and reveals a vast bounty of glistening breakfast foodstuffs.

ANNC (a gruff male voice tinged with a Southern accent and a nip of mornin' whiskey):
“Now at Huckleberry’s, our famous Homestyle RanchHand Breakfast Slabs are coming with a side order…OF FUN!”

(SFX: birthday horn)

SUDDENLY, from above, a large, multilayered pink, blue and white birthday cake hammers into frame. It drops next to the breakfast Slab, quivering. Its candles are lit. The top reads “CAKE IT!”

ANNC: “That’s right. For a limited time, order any RanchHand Slab and you can CAKE IT for less than a sawbuck.”

Quick CUT to a MAN dining in a booth. He wears a butcher’s apron smeared with various unthinkables.

MAN: “CAKE IT!”

CUT to a small WOMAN in lumberjack garb as she beholds her meal.

WOMAN: “CAKE IT!”

CUT to a frosting-smeared DOG, a Retriever, as it hungrily eats cake beside its blind owner who gropes about for his food.

DOG: (bark!)

CUT back to steaming tabletop as breakfast items are identified.

ANNC: “Oh, you’ll still get four cooked-to-order eggs, seven pieces of Chickisaw County Boar Bacon, a sausage chub, French toast, a sizzlin’ ham steak and a soda or milkshake”

CUT an older man sits at a booth, fork and knife at the ready, as a cake drops on his table. We can feel its sheer weight on impact.

OLDER MAN: “Happy birthday to ME!”

He digs in sans utensils. Graphics come up over his onslaught.

ANNC: “Don’t fake it- CAKE IT! Start your day the Huckleberry’s way- with a rich, hearty birthday cake for only $.99!”