12/23/24

THE HUMAN DOG BLOG

04/16/18

DEPT: Blog

THIS IS THE BLOG OF THE HUMAN DOG.
THIS IS IMPORTANT EVIDENCE OF THE END OF THE WORLD.
ALSO THE OCCASIONAL RECIPE.
THANK YOU.

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Nightcap 04/02/11

04/03/11
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What wisdom can I leave you with tonight? Recommendations for what type of hot dog condiment goes best with your facial moles? Or a reminder of the value large, leather straps have to bruisers and nuns alike? Perhaps a plea not to stand too close to the walls as we’ve just had them painted to cover the gouge and scratch marks from the family reunion?
Ultimately, I can’t tell you anything. You’ll have to find your own way. You don’t listen to good sense anyhow, which is how you wound up with a room full of broken umbrellas and no man in your life.
THIS IS NOT AN ADVICE COLUMN. PLEASE STOP SENDING ME BAKED GOODS.

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VOCABULARY

04/02/11
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[box type="info"] emboldened past participle, past tense of em·bold·en (Verb) 1. Give (someone) the courage or confidence to do something or to behave in a certain way. 2. Cause (a piece of text) to appear in a bold typeface [/box] I love the phrase "emboldened" and it's usage in American political culture. I never hear it in day to day life, though, only in Official Reports on The State of Things. Like, "Sammy's foot resting on a new sewer grate emboldened him to pee down his leg." Or "All this talk of an A-Team marathon emboldened me to eat another batch of Eggos instead of reading to the foster kids." And either of the definitions is great. Emboldened goes well with my other favorite horseshit term, mulling. As in, "I'm seriously mulling violating all rules of decorum and buttering...

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FREELOADERS

04/02/11
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The nation’s greedy corporations and insatiable wealthy are fattening themselves on workers. There’s no trickle down. It’s the opposite; the rich have been sucking the economic lifeblood from the middle class for decades. When reckless Wall Street banksters get taxpayer-funded bailouts, billionaires get tax breaks and gigantic corporations like GE and Bank of America pay absolutely no federal income taxes, they’re getting for free the very public services that enable them to make massive profits in this country—the courts, the roads, the trade regulators, the patent enforcement. The middle class doesn’t get those big time special deals and loopholes. Workers pay their taxes. As a result, it’s workers footing the bill for the government services that enrich the rich. Greedy corporations...

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Morning Constitutional 04/01/11

04/01/11
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It’s on days like these – rainy, technicolor, zipped – that a man considers his legacy. How will he be remembered? How will he be renumbered? What achievements will stand after he’s gone?
For me, I trust my name will be synonymous with shoes and boots thrown atop buildings. Commercial buildings, second homes, garden sheds – all within my reach. If need be, I’ll use a ladder. And they won’t be my shoes. People will still chuckle when they think of the time I stole their work boots and violently flung them to the roof of their local Jiffy Lube.
And children will cry for having not met me.

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SHOULD I EAT THIS COOKIE?

03/31/11
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I've had this Winter Sweater Cookie for a few months now. It's pressed between two sheets of Waxed Paper in a large manilla envelope. Every so often I take it out and force people to look at it, then write down how it made them feel.

I think the green icing tastes like mint not like a frog or a traffic light. I don't know for sure. I don't know the snow man's name, but I never asked.

Also, I lied: I've actually had this cookie for a few years now. I can't get to sleep without knowing where it is. I would never eat it in front of anyone. Just like Veal.

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Morning Constitutional 03/31/11

03/31/11
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As a 7th grader I spent many evenings sitting inside a large refrigerator cardboard box. By choice. The box had one side section removed through which television reruns of Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains could be viewed.

Inside I sat on a considerable pile of stuffed animals, most purchased, some donated. Often I would don goggles and keep my fingers crossed until it was uncomfortable. At regular intervals, even during viewing hours, two Teamsters would enter the house, lift the lid above me and pour in more stuffed animals, often Korean in origin.

This went on for months until both my parents and the school agreed I would repeat the 7th grade and never discuss this matter publicly.

Today, that embargo ends.

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JOE BAGEANT HAS DIED

03/30/11
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Joe described himself as a redneck socialist, and he was. He was profoundly concerned with the fate of the people he wrote about, those who worked hard all their lives and ended up with nothing. Funny: I’ve never met a socialist who didn’t care about others, or a capitalist who did. The truth is that a great many decent people are on the wrong side of the intelligence curve, don’t come from families that send their young to university,and can’t protect themselves from the corporate lawyers and bought legislatures.

SOURCE

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COULDN’T RECALL

03/30/11
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Taking in Charles Ferguson's excellent documentary, Inside Job, about the dark doings of Wall Street in our time, I confess I was awestruck all over again at the complete surrender of Obama to the very characters who embodied the corruption that rotted our system from the heart outward. Summers, Rubin, Geithner, and a host of other revolving door grifters who did everything possible to set up the implosion of banking, defeat the rule of law in money matters, and ruin millions who wanted nothing more than something useful to do in this society for a living wage. Most impressive of all in this brave film were the shameless academic mandarins caught on camera trying to weasel out of their greed-driven misdeeds - Glenn Hubbard, chair of the Columbia University Econ department, a perfectly...

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VIDEO REPUBLICANS DON’T WANT YOU TO SEE

03/30/11
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In the clip, Duffy is asked whether he'd support cutting his own salary. Duffy says he would, but only as part of a plan where all public employees' salaries would be cut. He then said that the $174,000 in salary (not including benefits) he receives is a squeeze for his family of seven to live on. The Conservatives are waging a war against the Working Class in this country. They don't want you to see a video of a Wisconsin Republican whining that his congressional salary of $174,000 is too small to live on while he and his party demand that everyone else work like slaves for nothing. He complains that he can't afford his six children on this salary. It's called birth control you stupid piece of shit. You're familiar with it. Your party voted to defund Family Planning, one of the primary...

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Nightcap 03/29/11

03/30/11
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The best nights are those when the furnace goes quiet and you can hear the filing cabinet. It’s faint but if you control your breathing, you can make out words and sometimes melodies.
Most of it’s in Portuguese and often it’s just strings of numbers but it’s drenched with emotion. The other furniture says the filing cabinet is crazy, it’s just muttering. But sometimes I make out the name Lucia. I suspect he had a family, or at least a wife, and had to leave her to come to America to make a better life for them. Then after establishing himself, he sent for her only to learn of The Accident.
He would stand alone from then on, condemned to a solitary eternity holding old copies of Mad Magazine and bags of Canadian pennies.

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GIGLIO’S ITALIAN MARKET

03/29/11
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In 1926, Frank Giglio, an Italian immigrant from Calabria, Italy founded a small grocery store just blocks away from Detroit's Eastern market. In a predominatly Italian neighborhood his products brought a part of "home" back to his friends in the area. He carried pastas, oils, olives, homemade sausage, lunch meats like mortadella, salami and prosciutto and a variety of cheeses. Giglio's Market was a family run business and still continues that tradition today. Over the years our customers have grown to include many ethnicities and although the Italian specialties are still dominant, Giglio's has adapted to carry many hard to find products from all over the world. From Italy to Detroit to St Clair Shores, the Italians fled. This store was frequented by my relatives who lived down the...