Author Richard Cahill's Website--Living By Our Motto:"There Are No Stupid Questions, Just Stupid People Asking Questions Everybody else already knows the answer to."

Wannabee VP Kristi Noem has finally decided to shut up about shooting her dog by canceling the rest of her book tour, and wannabee President Robert F Kennedy Jr. opened up about having a worm devour a part of his brain.
 
So, congrats to both of them for surging to the top of the political headlines the very week Stormy Daniels described banging the Tangerine Drama Queen under oath, by doing and confessing to things even more disgusting than the Stormy One servicing the mushroom.
 
Kennedy was quoted as saying, “A worm got into my brain and ate a portion of it.” This is just something you never want to have to say, whether you are running for elected office, trying to get laid, or even applying for a minimum wage job. If by some miracle Kennedy is elected President, which would probably require Biden and Trump to pull guns on each other at their final debate and be shot to death by their competing Secret Service details in order to prevent them from murdering each other, the country can have four years to wonder if it is being led by a brain worm.
 
The cries of “Too old!” that follow Biden and Trump will soon be drowned out by the shouts of “Too wormy!” that will echo in Kennedy’s footsteps, and the Anti-Vaccinator will never get a chance to move into the Oval.
 
Kristi, on the other hand, still remains in Trump’s possible VP pool, despite getting bounced around like a pelota in the court of public opinion about shooting a puppy whose only offense was pissing her off. The controversy was not quelled when she offered to shoot Biden’s dog as well. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe dogs should only be shot by drunk hunters who mistake them for deer, or the police when they come to your house when you want to report a crime and your dog starts barking at them.
 
Probably she’s still in the VP race because she is the best-looking female prospect in the Republican party. Elise Stefanik is a trifle zaftig and Marjorie Taylor Greene apparently has appeal for some of the guys in her gym, but by Trump standards, she is a serious butterface.
 
John McCain proved that picking the best-looking Republican woman available to be your running mate was a poor choice back in ’08, but learning stuff has never been Trump’s strong suit. If he lets the Mushroom be his guide, Noem may well be a heartbeat away from the presidency in 2025, especially if she’s not too averse to spending a little pajama time with the orange autocrat herself.
 
Is there a way for her to dig her way out of the bloodstained gravel pit of public opinion regarding her bulleting her puppy? Sure, there is. She just needs to release this statement, which I have generously written for her:
 
“I blasted Cricket (actual dog’s name) because I suspected he had a worm in his brain. He had been slurping up clam chowder with some of the Kennedys, who are known worm carriers and also Democrats. Rather than letting the poor thing live out his days nurturing a Democratic parasite in his frontal lobes, I tearfully sent him to Doggy Heaven by shooting him right in the worm.”
 
You know that will work. And, as for Noem claiming to have met Kim Jong Un, which she says she did in her book, and which just plain didn’t happen, she just has to say she split a plate of loaded nachos with a fat Asian guy at a Super Bowl party, and assumed he was the North Korean leader because she thought Kim was the only fat Asian guy on the planet.
 
It’s a mistake anyone MAGA could make.

Walking our Chihuahua, Cujo, is a household chore that belongs to me most days, and the main purpose of the walk is to get him to perform his excretory duties outside. Mostly I encourage him to make his little dog poopies in the mulched flower beds maintained by the HOA. His efforts blend in well there, and relieve me of the responsibility of bagging them and carrying them around for the remainder of our sojourn.

When he does poop on naked asphalt or concrete, I bag it as any dog owner should. This is not universal among my neighbors, though, as the Cuje and I discovered few days ago. A much larger dog had done his job right in front of the community mailboxes, and his or her owner had just left the poop chunks lie in that well-trafficked spot.

It was almost inevitable that someone would step in them, as my neighborhood is populated by old people whose sight and smell has deteriorated, and nothing excites them more than getting mail. They stampede the boxes the minute the mail person has finished stuffing them. One of them was going to get dog doo on their shoes.

I was going to pick up the specimens myself, but then I noticed someone else had already seen the offending load. They did not pick it up, but strove to warn the neighborhood by sprinkling glitter all over it.

I found myself failing to appreciate the thoughtfulness of this gesture, however. It would have been just as easy to go get a bag and remove the dog dirt as to return with glitter with which to decorate it. Unless of course you customarily carried glitter on your person, which would mean you were a stripper. None of my neighbors look like strippers, which I regard as one of the disadvantages of bunking here, but moving to a location where more strippers lived would be a hard sell to my Significant Other.

The glitter had been applied hastily—much of it had missed its intended targets and lay on the concrete around it. It was a generous handful, though, thrown by someone with an ample supply of the sparkly stuff. An arts and crafty person. Many of my neighbors look like they might be the type to spend hours with glue, yarn, glitter and tinsel, making clever handmade things. These people I generally admire, because I know I would last about two minutes at crafting before dumping all my supplies in the trash and going out for a beer.

Or was this a salute to the season? Did someone, after putting up a tree and stringing lights across their porch, and, still not weary from their decorating labors, say to themselves “Let’s spruce up that dog shit over there, too. After all, it’s Christmas.”

All of these glitter-and-poo thoughts ran through my head, but Cujo was thinking about something else entirely. Inspired, he pooped right next to his predecessors’ pile, beneath the mailbox post.
​
And as long as I had the bag out anyway… 

I don’t kick dogs. I admit I was caught on tape saying “I kick dogs. Dogs come running up to me, because I always keep a sandwich in my pocket, and I just kick them. Sometimes I pull their tails, too.”

I did say that. I was caught on tape saying that, so I can’t deny it. But I do deny ever really kicking a dog. When I said those words, I was talking to Michael Vick, the pro football quarterback who served a prison term for abusing animals. I was just trying to make myself more like my newfound bro. It was just “kennel banter” with a man who ran a Bates Motel for puppies.

I didn’t know the mic was hot.

Now I have all these people coming forward saying I kicked their dogs. They are all publicity-seeking liars. They’re just nasty. Disgusting. Most of their dogs were too ugly to kick. If I were to kick a dog it would be a cute dog. And a small dog, because who’s stupid enough to kick a large dog? Think about it.
But the media publishes these lies, meant to poison the minds of my neighbors, who wish I would move away. But I won’t. I’ll never quit until I make my neighborhood great again.

The ninety-year-old woman who lives catty-corner from the mailbox claims I kicked her dog back in 2013. I categorically deny that. I have never punted her Pomeranian. Her description of the incident, in which her dog sailed into her recycle bin, like a last second, game-winning field goal, after being thumped by my admittedly strong right leg—yes, I have strong legs. Probably the strongest legs of anybody you know—is entirely fictional. An invention of her nasty old mind.

And here’s proof. Here is an email from her daughter in Florida, asking me to watch the disgusting old woman’s dog while she was in rehab. Rehab for what? People tell me it was for heroin addiction, that her “broken hip” was just a cover story. I don’t know, but some people are saying that. But who would ask me to watch a dog I supposedly kicked? Now, this email isn’t actually from her daughter, I know. It’s from her next-door neighbor. Who happens to be Michael Vick.

The tale of me booting a Bichon Frise against a garage door so hard it set off someone’s security alarm is just another 100% percent fabricated lie by my HOA and its political allies, who admit they just want me to go away. That Bichon Frise came onto me. It was jumping all over me, trying to get at my sandwich. It may have made accidental contact with one of my steel-toed boots, which I wear around the house at all times for safety, NOT TO KICK DOGS!

It’s true I said “Look, a dog. I need to put my steel-toed boots on in case I want to kick it,” over the hot mic. I was just joking with a new-found pal who I knew was into major animal cruelty. The part where I added “The ones I polish with bacon grease,” was meant in jest. I make a lot of jokes. I’m just a funny guy. Probably funnier than anyone else you know.

Why didn’t any of these people come forward until that tape came out and I denied it? They could have complained ages ago about me walloping their wiener dogs left and right. All right, some of them did, but just to my other neighbors, the Homeowner’s Association, and the police. Which makes it a conspiracy, right? Think about it.

And here’s even more proof. I have a dog myself, a nine-pound Chihuahua. Perfect kicking size. People who kick dogs say to me, “Man, I’d like to put my foot into your dog. That is one hot, kickable dog.” So I have a perfectly good dog to kick already. Why would I kick other dogs?

All of these accusations are being spread by my opponents, the neighbors, the cops and the SPCA. They want my block to descend into darkness. They know I alone can save it. From dogs.
​
Hey, you want a bite of this sandwich?

Once upon a time my sitter asked me to watch her dog for a week while she hit the beach. No problem, I said. Had met the dog and he’s cool with me. So Chief racked here and it was all good. Had to be out of town on business a couple of days, though, so I left Chief behind with the now ex-wife who called in a panic. Chief had discovered and devoured two utilized feminine hygiene devices.  What should be done?

I couldn't say. I have little experience in that area.  I've noticed dogs eat whatever they want to eat, providing they can get their paws on it, and live (or not) with the consequences. However one must understand that the dog in question is only very slightly larger than 2 feminine hygiene devices put together, so in a flash of conscience I suggested she call the vet across the street and inquire. To make a long and disgusting story short, Chief dealt with one in each direction (luck or talent?) and remains well to this day.

I am only reminded of this as my house now usually contains 3-5 dogs. I’m certain one is mine. The others just seem to collect here –kind of like a modern day Arnolds' without the Fonz. The "dog  door," which is actually a  screen on the deck my dogs jump through whenever I fix it- is always open.  They are a varied lot but it is kind of an unwritten rule in my very rural North Carolina neighborhood that as long as they are mellow, dogs run free. Seriously, the cat is the bad ass. Sometimes when on a boring conference call I will un-mute during a rousing barkfest just for comic relief for my assuredly co-bored coworkers.

It’s all well and good until the fall when the local hunters get to shoot deer legally. They raise a few dogs a season, and by raise I mean chain them up get them fed and ready to run, truck them in a cage in the back of a pickup to the hunting grounds and then cut them loose to scare up Bambis to shoot. Then they drive away without them, at which point they wander toward my place and the dog occupancy rises.

I’d prefer if you didn’t abandon your dogs but it is your right here in this state. I know you can afford to keep them, though, given the size of your trucks and the dollars you spend on styling outdoor threads and ammo. Ever been to a Cabela’s? Sheesh.

My Milk Bone line item is ever growing.

I have a dog. I didn't set out to have a dog. He came with my relationship. That's the way I acquire dogs. Divorced girls, which are the kind of girls I dated, have pets.  My dates were mostly dog owners, with only an occasional crazy cat lady thrown in. I had a corgi for several years. He was a great dog, a real dog's dog, a ball chaser and a river swimmer. He could demolish any chew toy, no matter how indestructible the pet store had assured me it was, within an hour. He applied a maniacal intensity to the task, not stopping for a moment until he stilled its squeaking heart and left it a pile of lifeless Dacron on the floor.

I had a pair of daschunds for the better part of a year. These dogs were capable of amazing feats of sneakiness, like getting up onto the dining room table to scavenge food that had been left there even though their legs were only two inches long. They were also chronic furniture leg wetters and rug poopers, so when that romance faded, I didn't bother missing them at all.

My present dog is a Chihuahua. I probably would not have abided a foo-foo dog when I was a younger guy. Like many younger guys, I would have wanted a dog that was more of a reflection of myself, which is to say a big hairy mess. Now that I have been a Chihuahua owner for four years, I have come to the conclusion that a small dog will do anything for me that a big dog will do, and do it quicker and more compactly.

When I drop butter onto the carpet, for example, I don't have to lick it out of the pile. I have a dog for that. When the landscapers are power-blowing the leaves out of the condo's shared driveway, as they do every week, I don't have to bark at them as if they were a harbinger of the apocalypse. My dog has that covered. I don't have to carry my dirty socks around in my teeth. My dog will do that for me. When a stranger comes to my door, I never have to give that stranger a little nip on the ankle. My dog is only too happy to nip away.

We have to take care of my Significant Other's children's dog once in a while, because they take care of the Chihuahua when we leave town. This gives me ample opportunity to ponder the difficulty of owning a large dog, because this dog is truly huge. My girl claims she is a Great Dane, but there is nothing great about this dog. She is 140 pounds of tail-wagging puppy, unlike the Chihuahua, who is eight pounds of furry misanthrope. The big dog loves everybody and everything, which can hurt, especially when I am seated and she suddenly decides to use the step-stool of my testicles so she can lick my face. She attaches herself to me, because my S.O. is not nearly strong enough to manage her.  I am the one who has to take care of her needs, the most pressing of which is hauling her outside in the (usually vain) hope that she will poop there.

The Chihuahua accompanies us on these fecal missions. I carry two bags, but I only ever need one, because while being outside is a laxative for the little dog, the monster dog is a master of intestinal self-control. She is content to wrap me up in her leash while I struggle to clean Chihuahua poo off the sidewalk. People laugh. Screw them, I think bitterly. Very bitterly, because I know when the big dog will poop. In the middle of the night, in the house. I will wake up and go downstairs and find a mighty obelisk of dog waste on the carpet. In the angled light from the rising sun it will cast a dark shadow on the beige of the rug and on my mood as well, because I never think upon awakening "Oh, I would love to get a grip on some gigantic animal turds before I make coffee this morning."

"She only poops on the floor when she is upset," say my girl's kids brightly, when they return from wherever exotic vacation locale they have left the big dog behind to visit, and I think darkly that if I adopted that policy myself they would think twice about popping off to Europe or the Caribbean every time they had the chance.

But I just grit my teeth and wait patiently until the big dog is retrieved, so I can return to the small dog lifestyle. When the Chihuahua jumps up on my lap, my privates are not pained; when I want him to be somewhere, I just pick him up and put him there; when he poops on the rug, a Kleenex and a shot of carpet cleaner has the house sanitary again in no time. I feel no anger toward him for these rare accidents.

He only does it when he's upset. 

My Significant Other is a safety brake person, and I am not. She puts the safety brake on whenever her car is parked, even when her car is parked level in the garage. I don't bother yanking on the handle of safe unless I am parked on a precipitous drop, and sometimes not even then, preferring to rely on the "park" notch on the transmission handle.

Which, as I point out to her, seems to work fine. This is the method I use to secure my own car against the force of gravity, and that reliable, American-made machine has gone nearly 130,000 miles without pitching itself off the edge of a cliff or careening wildly out of control down the sidewalk. "It says 'Park' right on it," I tell her. "That's what it's for."

These arguments do not persuade her. Often, when I am operating her car and she is in the passenger seat, I hear her yanking on the safety brake handle before I have even turned off the ignition. I am used to her assistance with vehicle controls—whenever we drive together the climate controls and the radio are hers alone to operate. I am left with only the gas and brake pedals, the steering wheel and the turn signals to use independently, and I do that only under the closest instruction, occasionally punctuated by a panicky scream of "We're all going to die!" when some traffic incident forces me to make a quick maneuver.

"We're both going to die," I correct her. This display of grammatical pedantry under fire never seems to soothe her, but I enjoy it.

Household tasks are treated the same way. "Did you put soap in the dishwasher?" she says, as that machine begins to cycle. Inquiries about whether lights are off or doors are locked follow me around the domicile, as she apparently thinks I would live in a chaotic whirlwind of blazing lights and unlocked doors if left to my own preferences. I let the dog out every morning, because she is a slugabed, whereas I always arise sparkling at first light, ready every day to begin working or drinking, whatever is on my schedule.  My first chore is the dog one. Every morning I watch as he squats on the flagstone of the condo back yard and then sniffs the resulting product heartily. I long ago came to the conclusion that for my dog, a deep AM whiff of his own substance is the equivalent of that first cup of coffee for me, a bracing draught that puts his whole day in perspective.

I do this every single day. Nonetheless, when my girl's eyes finally flutter open, usually sometime before noon, her first question is to me is invariably "Did you poop the dog?"

The sanitary engineering around the house is my job too, naturally, as it is every man's. Hauling the bins to the street every week has been my task since our first date. This week it was more onerous than usual, since I had been out of town during the last recycle pickup, and the bin was groaning under the weight of numerous empties. I decided to take the bins out separately, and simultaneously stick a few items in the mailbox. I noticed that one of the letters didn't have a stamp on it and, remembering I had stamps in my car, which was parked a few hundred feet away, went to get one. I mailed the envelopes and went back for the regular trash bin.

The trouble was, I had only been cleared for taking out the trash. In my girl's mind a timetable had been set, as inexorable as an oxygen gauge on a diver's tank or a timer on a pipe bomb. For too long I had been out of contact, like an errant space probe. Communication had to be re-established.

"Richard, WHERE ARE YOU?" I heard her bellowing in the distance.

"Wandering around outside, doing irresponsible things," I yelled back. "It was wise of you to check up on me."

She didn't think that was funny, but all the neighbors did.

The last week in this month has been declared "National Scoop the Poop Week." I cannot mention this without referring to a friend of mine who collects arcane celebrations. It was he who made me aware of National Cheeseball Day, which I gratefully embraced. This column is my way of returning the favor.

About Scoop the Poop Week I am less enthusiastic. First off, why does poop get a week while cheeseballs only get a day? Cheeseballs may not be the nation's favorite snack--that would be nachos--but they are certainly more popular than dog waste. The answer must be that the poop lobby was muscular enough to take over 1/52 of the year, whereas cheeseball enthusiasts were cornered into accepting a mere day, possibly even a weekday, during which their special contribution to America is celebrated. Doesn't seem fair to me. For one thing, if your cheeseball or your pup's poop ends up on the rug, both events are considered minor household tragedies of roughly equal significance. 

We celebrated National Cheeseball Day around these parts by buying a cheeseball, naturally. What's left of it is still in the fridge, sealed in a baggie, with bits of stale Doritos still embedded in it, snapped off there like tiny, fried cornmeal knife tips when the cheeseball celebrating got really crunk. Scooping the poop is an ongoing project, because we have a dog every day. To acknowledge Scoop the Poop Week, I read a smarmy Yahoo piece entitled "Fact and Fiction about Dog Poop."  This article was one of those articles that blithely informs you that everything you thought you knew about some subject is wrong. Nobody likes hearing that. You wonder why these articles are popular, then you realize that they enable you to got tell somebody else that everything they think they know is wrong. Everybody likes doing that.

The article tells us that the best way to dispose of Fido feces is to flush them down the toilet. To this I say: Not happening. It requires enough careful attention to bag the stuff in the first place without getting any on your fingers. I am not taking the still-warm bag inside, unwrapping it like it contained some kind of poo-perfumed soap and lobbing it into the tranquil waters of my American Standard. I usually settle for what Yahoo calls the second-best method of ridding the earth of my dog's nature calls—I toss the bag in the trashcan.

And I admit I only do that when the dog poops someplace obvious, like the neighbor's sidewalk or a tennis court. When my dog deposits his duty on bare earth, especially bare earth near the cover of convenient bushes, I leave it there, to become part of nature's grand, poop-based cycle.

Yahoo lashes out at me for doing this. It informs me that feces from carnivorous animals have to be mixed with egg shells and grass clippings and allowed to break down over time before they will nourish the tender shoots of spring. I am skeptical about this, since carnivores of every stripe have been pooping on earth ever since they finished digesting their first satisfying, meaty meal and plant life seems to be holding its own nonetheless. I grow even more skeptical when I think about myself mixing a big batch of dog doo and eggshells as part of my  Saturday chores every week and know that feeling the warm glow of being insanely more earth-conscious than everybody else I know would not be reward enough for me to do that. I would watch the game instead, and after a couple close plays would forget all about my  Chihuahua poisoning the soil, day after day.

Where's the rest of that cheeseball?

Keep Spot Away From Your Stash!

The head of the DEA has urged Americans to reconsider legalizing marijuana because it may be bad for their dogs.

This represents major backpedaling on the part of the government, which, as recently as my personal youth, held that marijuana led to sex crimes (which back then were defined as black men having sex with white girls) insanity and death, or at least was a "gateway drug" which would lead to drugs that actually did cause sex crimes, insanity and death.

Many of us tried smoking pot anyway, probably in the hope that it would lead to sex, even if it was of the criminal variety, but discovered that, despite what we had been told. it only led to sniggering hysterically while watching Monty Python reruns and then eating a gallon of ice cream. This partially engendered the basic distrust of the government that most Americans are noted for today, and also made some of us notably fat as well.

Now all the anti-marijuanistas can find to say is that regular dope use is suspected to destroy personal drive and ambition. Today's useless stoners could be curing cancer instead of watching fail videos on YouTube if they weren't in a state of semi-permanent bakitude, weed-haters argue. That's probably true, but they could also be looting your IRA. Lack of ambition is a two-edged sword.

Mankind's history with dope goes back to the dawn of it. Smoking ganja probably predates drinking beer, since you don't need a lot of cauldrons and tanks to make the intoxicant. You just have to discover fire. Desire for beer has sometimes been credited as inspiring the first civilizations. Nobody gives marijuana credit for that. In fact, stoners probably got their original bad rap back in the Stone Age, when beer lovers told them, "Look, we need to invent civilization and agriculture so we can have tubs and grain to brew beer," and the stoners replied "Pass. There's a sunset scheduled for tonight that we plan to be completely blazed for. And we ate all your grain."

Here in America, we have by now, after years of putting tokers in jail or at the least forcing them to eat innumerable foul-tasting roaches when police flashers go on behind them, have mostly decided that they are usually harmless and it would be better to leave them be. The DEA has noted this, and in a desperate rearguard action, has decide to invoke the specter of harm to possibly the only thing that Americans love more than beer, pot and porn—their dogs.

Apparently, dogs are getting into people's pot brownies and ending up at the veterinarian's office, suffering from ill effects, according to Michele Leonhart, the DEA chief in question, and not just the ill effect of having their noses whacked angrily by  pot brownie bakers. According to Michele, and the USA Today article she quoted:

...the effects of marijuana could make it more difficult for a dog to breathe or vomit up a product that could kill them, like butter.

Well, everyone likes a breathing dog over the alternative, so no argument there.  But a dog that is unable to vomit doesn't strike me as a problem. Dogs live to vomit. It's their revenge for leashes. They consider it a canine duty. And your dog will only vomit one place-on your rug. Dogs will never toss their biscuits on a tile or wood floor.  Try this experiment. Put the tiniest rug you own—the one with the little arms that hug your toilet will do—in the middle of an NBA basketball court.  Bring in a sick dog. That dog will run all the way across the court to that rug before it yacks, even if it has to dart through the legs of the Laker Girls to do it.

So if legal blunt gives us an America where fewer dogs are hucking chow, I regard it as a positive, no matter what scare tactics the DEA may employ. Let the stoners be free! And let them keep their brownies away from their dogs. But if they don't, and they really want their dog to vomit, there's a simple solution—just give it some beer.