February Odds and Ends

I'm too distracted today to write a proper entry, so I leave you with a few odds and ends.

For the last few months, I've had a "dog machine" living directly across the street from me. What is a "dog machine", you might ask?

It's not a machine, of course; it's just a dog on the smaller end of medium. The reason I call this animal a "dog machine" is that it is constantly barking, morning, noon, and night in a precise, measured rhythm. The dog never gets tired of barking and never gets a sore throat. It's almost as if my neighbor has placed a recording of a dog barking in their backyard in a continuous 24-hour loop.

Fortunately, the normal sounds inside my house pretty much cover up the incessant barking.

But I feel sorry for the dog. It's obvious the dog is lonely being stuck in the back yard all the time and simply wants attention. And I have to admit I don't understand the mentality of people who get an animal, then never spend any time interacting with it, other than at feeding time.

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I've noticed that new fast food restaurants in my area are placing their drive-through windows higher than was previously standard in such places. Previously, when using a fast food drive-through, I would hand my money straight across; now I'm handing it up to the clerk. No doubt the ubiquity of SUVs in American life is responsible for this new phenomenon.

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I've got a new favorite commercial on the radio. This one is for Frank's Red Hot Sauce, where an elderly woman tells us, "I put that sh-BEEP! on everything!" in a sweet, little-old-lady tone of voice. I'm surprised the morality police isn't foaming at the mouth to get this commercial off the air. Yes, there's a beep, but there's enough of the original word that everyone knows she's really saying, "I put that shit on everything"