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Saturday, March 13, 2010

DOGS: Bad Dogs, Bad Dogs-- Whatcha Gonna Do, Whatcha Gonna Do...

It's no secret that I love "COPS." I love COPS even more than I love Gilbert & Sullivan-- and I may be the only person in the whole goddamn world who can say that sentence in all seriousness. Give me a choice between a night at the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and a marathon of "COPS," I would be hard-pressed to choose those expertly-trained voices over a couple hours of baton-bashing, dumbass-tasing fun.

I mean-- a free night of Gilbert & Sullivan might sway me-- but opera tickets are expensive, and COPS is free and out on bail.

My wife is a "COPS" (and G&S) convert, I'm happy to say-- and I didn't even have to resort to the last-ditch tactic of cuffing and stuffing her... on the sofa in front of the TV on a Saturday night. She went willingly. Maybe she gets all misty-eyed and remembers the times when we were first long-distance dating and I would be watching "COPS" at my place in suburban Philadelphia, and she would be watching "COPS" at her place in Pittsburgh and we would discuss the various foot pursuits and felony car stops with intense sexual longing.

Like most couples do.

One of the things that my wife likes to poke some justified fun at are the police pontifications that inevitably occur at the beginning of each segment.

They're unscripted, but they might as well be, because they're all the fucking same:

I always knew I wanted to be a cop.

I got into law enforcement 'cuz I wanted to help people.

My dad's a cop, his dad was a cop, my uncles and cousins are all cops-- my wife's a dispatcher, my grandmother was a cop-- kicked the shit out of Al Capone once-- and my dog's a K-9 cop. My gerbil's a sergeant on the tactical entry unit of the SWAT team the next county over.

You meet a lot of interesting people in this job.

Every day you come into work, you never know what's going to happen.

It's that last one that gets me every time. Pal, nobody knows what the fuck is going to happen when they come into work. Yes, you might be getting mooned by a busload of drunken frat assholes from the local community college one minute and be arresting some banged-up hooker with tit-rings and anal leakage the next-- but, like, last week, I went to "Staples" and both of the black-and-white photocopiers were broken. Not only that, but the line at the post office was nine people long, and I had to take my bulk mailing in the next day, because, well, I just couldn't wait that long.

I mean-- I sure didn't know that was going to happen.

On Wednesday night, my wife and I got a puppy. Her name is Molly. She's very cute. God takes great pains to make puppies extra special cute so you don't beat their heads in with their empty food bowl when they hot-shit all over your brand new hand-woven oriental hallway runner.

I admit that I don't know what being a cop is like, but I suspect that, judging from the opening monologues diligently recited by police officers the country over that it's a lot like being the owner of a puppy.

"Every day, you never know what's going to happen."

Fuckin' aye, Ossifer. After a day or two of being a Puppy Daddy, I feel that shit. Hard. At 1:45 in the morning, I have also been known to step in it, bleary-eyed, on our bedroom floor.

On Thursday, I popped in on our little pup three times, to see how she was doing. We keep our veteran dog gated in the kitchen, because he has a nasty tendency to scratch/eat through doors when left alone, and so we thought we'd try gating our rookie dog with him until such time as we could procure a crate to crate-train the little Molly Monster. When I arrived home for Check-up #1, I entered the house and it was very, very quiet.

You never know what's gonna happen...

As I made my way to the kitchen, I saw one big, gray head in the kitchen doorway, above the top of the gate. Ah, hello, Finley, you good, old dog. But there was no sweet, small, blonde head to be seen. Finley was alone in the kitchen, the gate was still up.

"Oh, my God," I thought to myself, "she's dead."

And so, as a cop would, I cleared room after room. Kitchen: clear! Dining room: clear! Living room: clear! I started up the stairs one by one, smelling something unfortunate. As I stepped on the fifth or six stair, I saw that little blonde head poking out. And then I saw her little chocolate muffin treats all over our rug. Oh, and a pee-pee lake in the office. She had pushed against the gate with her head until it made enough of a space for her to crawl under.

The second time I came home, she showed Daddy her new trick: vaulting clear over the gate like an Olympic hurdle star.

When you own a puppy, you come home and take stock. The snow shovel is on the ground. There's a wet spot on the couch. The rug's mussed up. The bathroom door is ajar. The old dog looks very disturbed. A sweater is on the floor. It smells like a nursing home. It's time to play everybody's favorite game: "Find That Shitheap."

Predictability, like the ho-hum, hum-drum of the cubicle/office/non-profit administration world, is gone-- at least, until she's housebroken.

Until then, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do....

8 comments:

  1. I hate cops. A lot of them are some of the biggest assholes you'll ever meet who just want to make people's lives miserable, because they're miserable, because they took too many steroids and lost their football scholarships. Ass bags...

    And this is why I don't watch COPS. Like, ever...

    Plus, they all remind me of the dumb ass rednecks I deal with on a daily basis.

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  2. Dear Christina,

    You didn't really think you were going to go on an anti-police rant on my blog and have it go unanswered, did you?

    While I don't really wish to start WWIII over this, I'm very disappointed that this is the way you chose to reply to my blog about being a first-time puppy owner. As (I think) you know, I was once a police officer candidate, albeit for a brief time, and I frequently act as an advocate for slain police officers and their families.

    I have done so through monetary contributions to memorial foundations set up for deceased officers, felled in the performance of their duties by "ass bags" far worse than the worst cop out there, and I have done so through editorials, commentaries, letters to parole boards considering the release of convicted cop-killers, and through a book.

    Christina, it is people like you, who make blanket, prejudiced statements about 800,000 men and women of all races, creeds, sexual orientations, ethnic, social, economic and familial backgrounds that I decided to try to become a cop-- to prove those beliefs to be misguided.

    I'm sorry that you haven't had more positive experiences/encounters with law enforcement officers. Maybe one day you'll meet one who will change your mind.

    Hopefully, this response will make you think, rather than piss you off, entice you to fire back a hot, emotionally-charged rebuttal, and/or unfollow me. But, if that's the case, then so be it. I understand your opinions, and I am sure they developed from negative experiences, but I vehemently disagree with you-- and your comments are a slap in the face to decent men and women who do a thankless job, and the 16,000 of them in this country since 1792 who never got to come home to the people they loved.

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  3. In case you hadn't discovered this in late night syndication, COPS from the 80's is out of control. Every cop has a moustache and glasses with tinted lenses...yellow lenses, orange lenses, you name it...

    And they are raw. We've (my wife and I also love and watch together every Saturday night) seen dudes with gushing GSWs in their chests, that I just don't think they would put on TV anymore.

    Remarkably, the intros haven't changed. Same exact elements.

    As far as the dog goes, look on the bright side, at least it won't tell you to "fuck off and quit ruining its life" when it turns 15.

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  4. Since this is in fact about puppies, I hate to throw my opinion into the discussion at hand, but I feel that a happy medium exists.

    I grew up in Houston and was filled with an immense respect for the men and women who put their lives at risk to protect and serve. These men and women are heroes and deserved to be recognized as such. I further suggest that police throughout the nation fit this category.

    However, I'm currently in NYC, and my time here as led me to a hatred and disdain for police. It has been my experience that New York police (those that interact with civilians on a general basis) are selfish, abusive of power, and care more about making a red light or parking in a bike lane than protecting and serving.

    I therefore easily understand both viewpoints. Police are in fact heroes, and there should be no question about this. But it only takes a few bad cops to give the impression that they're all "ass bags" even if this isn't the case.

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  5. "and your comments are a slap in the face to decent men and women who do a thankless job"

    Well, I urge you to take a trip to the deep South, where, as a general rule, most of our state troopers are not decent. I meant no disrespect, because I have met some very decent cops that make every other one I've met balance out.

    And, actually, it only takes being pulled over once and a cop trying to use his "power" to take advantage of you ONCE to give a woman a bad impression of cops in general, especially since a vast majority are men.

    I didn't mean for this to start a freaking massive argument. Everyone has their own opinions, and I voiced mine. Just because I believe differently (and you may feel it's stereotypical)doesn't mean I don't have that right to feel that way, or have very valid, very deep reasons why. The cops I've experienced use their power over people not to be "heroes" but to be "villains."

    So, if every opinion I give on your blog is going to be taken as a slap at you, which it wasn't and didn't mean for it to be an attack on anyone necessarily (just a rant), then don't worry. I won't bother you anymore.

    And, seriously, I have a tendency to overlook what things are about and talk about random things within the blog itself, which took a big part of the blog entry itself. So excuse me for overlooking the puppy...

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  6. You're right, Christina. It only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch. But we have to take people as people, one at a time.

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  7. I liked the story about the puppy. That was fun.

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  8. Lol... Puppies are horribly nasty little creatures...

    I guess you're right, that's why God made them so freaking cute. So we wouldn't kill them.

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