tiny-dog.com

Closed

2008-06-11T08:03:00.000-07:00

I don't update this blog any more. I'm kind of out of the personal-style blogging for awhile. That said, there is this blog. That one gets updated quite a bit. However, if you are not into typewriters and stuff like that, you might not find it that interesting.

That is all.

I'm having a thrisis

2008-04-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

This made me laugh, especially the line: "There are angsty moments, of course, when you come to terms with the harsh reality of living in a grown-up world and having far less time to sit around eating Pot Noodle and watching Neighbours."

White Privilege? Check.

2008-03-23T11:13:00.000-07:00

I came across a link to this essay, "White Privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack" while reading one of my favorite blogs (Uppercase Woman). Although it is written in an unfortunately academic style, which dilutes its understandability (I *hate* academic writing) it's quite illuminating to read. I'm white, and have clearly enjoyed the privileges listed in the essay for that reason. I've always tried to make this same argument about male privilege, while not looking at my own racial privilege with the same scrutiny.

I think what struck me about it most was, that it is in fact a privilege to decide you don't want to talk about racism, a topic that I, like a lot of white liberal types, generally avoid. I think the essay is really worth reading and thinking about.

I was a straw-hat nincompoop

2008-02-12T15:49:00.000-08:00

At the risk of revealing my political persuasion to the untrustworthy interwebs, I participated in my local Democratic caucus for the first time in my inauspicious voting career.

I am not sure prior to 2008 I could have explained to you exactly what a caucus was. Bad American! Go to your room! But I have set things right this time by taking my proper place in this handy chart, in the bottom-most, squashed looking rectangle that represents The People's Will:

After perusing the official documentation ostensibly explaining the caucus process, and nowhere finding details about what actually occurs onsite, I turned to a local blog for the rundown. According to this source, there'd be a couple of hastily scribbled, open-air votes made by people not required to show proof of voter registration or party affiliation, between which one might see heated, rambling 1-minute candidate endorsements from one's nutty neighbors. Sounded pretty scientific to me. Sign me up!

I reported to exactly the location you might expect for such an affair: a sneaker-scented junior high school gym with the pall of 25 years of adolescent angst hanging in the rapidly heating air as frantic, hope-seeking Obamaniacs packed themselves in. A stray Clinton supporter, I bravely slapped on a perky Hillary! sticker handed to me by a resolute-looking twelve year old boy. As I was soon to discover, this would not be our day.

Jittery crowds rushed the rickety cafeteria benches, swarming out any prayer of reading one's precinct number on modest little tri-fold placards. God help you if you came unarmed with this number in advance: a map containing only wiggly lines and no street names was taped on a far, inaccessible wall of the gym, with precinct numbers scribbled upon it in an unsteady hand.

Somehow I found my table, and located a strewn pile of half-completed signup sheets. OBAMA. OBAMA. OBAMA, they read. I furtively scribbled a rogue vote for CLINTON, and tossed my sheet back into the unattended stack, dubious of its fate.

Just then, a pasty boy-man MC in an oversized suit stood up on a table, and shouted into the din. He was completely inaudible over the cacophany of Starbucks-clutching hope-mongers, who heckled him to speak up. His voice eventually rose to a barely audible level, and he proceeded to issue confusing instructions regarding whether it was necessary to stay for the second vote.

Now, I seemed to recall reading that the purpose of the second vote was for a) those flip-floppers who allowed their carefully-considered candidate choice, recorded a scant 30 minutes ago, to be changed on a dime by pushy neighbors high on lattes, or b) if you wanted to ascend to the next level of the above-mentioned graphic as a precinct captain or uber delegate or some such matter. Neither situation applied in my case, and so, desperate for air not superheated by the lungs of hyper Democrats, I headed for the exit.

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO PREPARE FOR IT TODAY, scolded Malcolm X from the grave, by way of an engraved stone staircase just outside. Comforting words for those of us who wriggled our way into the lowest rung of democracy on a cold Saturday afternoon, that is, until learning the next morning that one's candidate was trounced by a 70% margin statewide.

But it was still caucus day, and I had hope. I walked the two-block road home with my Hillary! sticker bravely affixed. "Clinton sucks!" shouted a slurring teen from the rolled-down window of a beater hatchback. Well, at least he didn't use her first name.

Flashback: Sauce Packet Writers

2008-01-22T12:34:00.000-08:00

In the heyday of Tiny Dog, I was given to produce many a strange side-project, such as this packet-by-packet analysis of Taco Bell marketing slogans.

I am reading it now, and I am not sure it makes any sense.

Late breakfast at the Black Bear cafe

2008-01-19T14:13:00.000-08:00

I guess the disembodied voice that warned me against going inside should have been my first clue that this establishment might not be the best choice for a late-morning weekday breakfast.

"Are you going in there?" it hissed, as I unloaded a certain toddler I know from her cracker-dusted car seat. I turned around and a Lincoln Town Car idled behind me in the parking lot, manned by an elderly couple sharing a sour expression.

"Uh, yeah?" I said. Theoretically, this was a work day for me, but as anyone who associates with toddlers knows, sometimes these critters can, on short notice, cause your plans to change. "Heat's broken in there," scolded the wife. Now, I was sort of feeling a little uncreative at the moment, and couldn't really think of anywhere else serving mid-morning meals easily handled by persons under the age of two that was within immediate driving distance, and so to my way of thinking, a little chill was not the end of the world. This seemed a little rude of a matter to explain to my new friends, however, who clearly expected me to move on.

"Ah, sounds... cold," I said.

"We didn't think the baby would like that," she nodded, case closed. Their window then rolled up, and they cruised slowly away, eyeing me expectantly. I waited until they were out of sight, and then proceeded past the 7-foot carved bear statue through the front doors.

Inside, the nearly empty, cavernous interior had a foreboding, cool stillness I remember from last winter's blackout days. Feeble midwinter sunlight crept in through frilly bear curtains. A dispirited kitchen worker in a greasy apron lead me to a u-shaped booth in a forgotten corner, flinging some crayons in front of the baby. There didn't appear to be any actual waitresses in the place.

While waiting to give our our order, we listened to patrons grumble about the cold. "The fans are stuck on!" they whined. "Cold air is blowing right on my plate!" The baby and I kept our coats on. "Hung-ry!" the baby insisted, dropping the hard "g" sound as she does, and I nodded. "We'll get you waffles," I said.

"Ah- no waffles," the kitchen guy muttered, minutes later. "Waffle machine is broken."

"Orange juice," I kept going, hopefully.

"Uh--"

"The orange juice machine is broken," I said.

"Yes." The baby looked at us expectantly. "French toast," I said. Was that my breath I saw? "Bacon."

"Down!" the baby said. She wanted out of her high chair. I lifted her out, wiggly and surprisingly heavier every day, or perhaps I'm just a day older each time I go to pick her up. Earlier that morning she'd fallen and scratched her face, this combined with my uncombed hair gave us the unhinged air of a single mother and her waif living in the back of a Buick, an impression I may have seen reflected in the disapproving looks of fellow cafe patrons as I walked the restless baby around the black bear knickknacks, statues, and paw print placards in the dining room.

Back in our seat, the food arrived. High chair refused, we moved on to a booster seat, whatever kept the wiggling in check. The baby began loading in French toast slices at wood-chipper speed. I looked out the window into the gray intersection, at the bus unloading cold-looking people onto the street. Does anything make you feel grown up quite like eating in a diner alone with your kid?

She'd never tried bacon, partially my fault, it seems so sinewy and unhealthy for a toddler, to me. I snapped off the tiniest flake and set it before her. She reached past this cautious offering, grabbing the entire fat-marbled slice, and poking it into a cup of syrup. "Dip!" she shouted. I blinked, and the bacon was gone.

"...and then I sat next to her bedside for weeks watching her waste away, watching the life literally drain out of her, and let me tell you, if anything will depress the holy Christ out of you, it is that." My booth neighbor concluded the story of his mother's demise, and his companion nodded grimly over her scrambled eggs.

"It's been five friggin minutes, and I'm still waiting for my coffee," said my neighbor on the other side, standing in a huff and stomping past the stone-faced kitchen-waitstaff guy. This latest bear-themed incarnation of the old steep-roofed 1960's diner building, formerly a smoke-filled Coco's, was clearly not long for this world. I put my arm around the little kid in her booster seat, now putting eggs into her face two hands at a time, and thought about these early years of her life, of which she wouldn't remember a single detail.

"Mama!" she grinned up at me. "Egg!"

Number twenty

2008-01-15T21:48:00.001-08:00

20) This web site was/is an epic and incoherent love letter to something that no longer exists. You know how as you move through life, you lose things? Important things? Friends, people you loved, places you lived? Interests that seemed to define who you were? This site is kind of a big, scratched up suitcase full of this sort of baggage, that I've been lugging all over the internet for eight years. I may keep lugging it around, I really don't know. It's just that there isn't a lot of room left in there at the moment.

Tiny dog: does it have a future?

2008-01-14T21:43:00.000-08:00

Who knows?

Reasons I never update the site, part 1:

1) I have another blog.
2) Toddler.
3) I'm old and my spirit limps along
4) The sheer weight of legacy content crushed my will to persist
5) Etsy.
6) Existential gloom.
7) My wrists hurt.
8) You've moved on
9) All things must change
10) Uh
11) It's time for bed
12) Shouldn't I be reading a book or something
13) Sewing hobby
14) Paralyzing Gen X nostalgia disorder
15) Pathological inability to be personally revealing
16) Nurturing a certain horrified speechlessness at the passage of time
17) Nothing to say
18) People are already well aware of my disdain for digitized animals in cinema
19) Too busy reading about guys shooting people in malls, murdering women, and throwing kids off bridges

Stay tuned for more!

The Hollywood Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse

2007-12-16T22:35:00.000-08:00

As a post-apocalypse aficionado, I make it my duty to withstand a periodic trip to a mainstream, Loews-style theater, the kind that plays commercials on its 100 foot screens at volume levels comparable to an armada of jet skis for 30 minutes before the previews, in search of the elusive, ultimate end-of-the-world blockbuster film. Generally I tend toward the talky, angsty independent type of movie, in which no semiautomatics appear, and no animals talk with digitized lips, but the chink in my armor is this matter of the apocalypse.

To really do the end of days justice, I am thinking you probably need a few million in your production budget, at least. Now Wes Anderson is great and everything, and who can ever get enough of sullen, post-comedic Bill Murray cameos and mannered 60's British pop? Not me. But when it comes to aerial shots of panicked quarantine victims being denied access to the last boat off Manhattan Island, bring on the cheeseball directors and their Land Rovers of cash.

Each time I gamble another handful of hours on a new EOTW experience, I always naively hope that this time, the parties involved in its creation will finally locate some actual screen writers and graphic designers to hammer out the details. Because for the love of god, if you can't find someone to write a compelling story without mile-wide holes in the plot, and you can't find a couple of graphic design clowns from a technical college who can't seem to manage to make lions not look like Monchichis from Second Life with ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS in your budget, then my friend, you are a the living definition of an idiot.

Which brings us to Big Willie Style, tearing down the florid, decaying streets of New York in a Matchbox car, hunting digital pronghorns with a semiautomatic while product-placement billboards for Yahoo and Loews Theaters scroll by. Unlike legions of ironically undiscriminating movie critics, I am strangely unmoved by the unpeopled streets of cinema's most clichéd major city as Big Willy wanders around, practicing his tee shot and bonding with mannequins to show us how crazy he's getting, what with this burden of being earth's last remaining benevolent military scientist with six pack abs. Oddly, no signs of the 1.5 million corpses that you would expect to see littering the country's most populous urban area in the recent shadow of a sudden epidemic appear anywhere onscreen.

And yet these are trivial, forgivable matters when stacked against my old cinematic nemesis, oh yes. The digiwolves.

They are back, my friend.

Tiny dog is, yet again, back.

2007-12-05T16:58:00.001-08:00

I kinda decided to return to the blog world somewhat ironically after spending some time at the library this afternoon, and watching dead-eyed tween-bots sit in front of product-placement-plagued virtual realm style games for two hours in the middle of the school day.

This morning there was an article in the paper that cemented my obsolescence in the universe, and it was this one. As I read the first few lines, I wasn't even entirely sure I understood what the article was about. Because there could be no possible way that we are raising a generation of people who will gladly part with cash in exchange for things that do not exist. But my friends, this is exactly what is happening. Could Madison Avenue be any more ecstatic than they are at this moment of heretofore unprecedented consumer susceptibility to stupid suggestions?

Every kid in the library between seven and 19 was glued, unmoving, to a screen, playing games, posting inappropriate personal details on social networking sites, furtively glancing at free samples of waxed corporate-porn product, or, ostensibly, charging pixelized avatars of consumer products to their PayPal accounts. I sat there for a minute, stunned to realize that such activities were the central goal of all these kids' waking hours, all across this country and beyond. It seemed so unbelievable that I just stood there for a few minutes, surrounded by tin shelves of unopened books, not knowing what to do.

I walked outside and watched a certain toddler who had accompanied me that day scamper off to the small outdoor ampitheater behind the library. It was the day after heavy rains, and the sun was almost down. She skittered over to the side of the building, shouting "Rocks!" and holding up some mossy white stones, which she then ferried down to a certain bench of her choosing, leaving them there to go fetch more. She brought sticks. She brought more rocks. The pile grew. It was wet and misty and the sun was now completely down. Her nose was red as she picked her way up the slimy hillside in search of yet another rock. "It's time to go home," I said. I wasn't convincing. She kept working on the pile. She already likes computers, of course. But she also thinks rocks are worth sorting in the cold, dark gloom of a weekday winter afternoon. Peer pressure and depressing, ubiquitous virtual compu-product hasn't yet staked its entire claim of her brain pan, the way it had every other kid inside the library at that very moment. I felt grateful to have that moment, at least.

Revenge of the dolls

2007-11-11T23:22:00.001-08:00

I have kind of stopped writing or blogging, and have instead been making weird dolls with my spare time. View the gallery here.

Tiny-dog: a historical retrospective

2007-11-02T12:37:00.000-07:00

Since TD has been a bummer of a Web site recently, join me in revisiting its more productive days via this link on the Wayback Machine.

Awesome.

Coolest things trick or treaters said last night at my house

2007-11-01T13:54:00.000-07:00

1) "Nice place you got."

2) "I like your baby."

3) "It smells good in here." (We were making tacos)

4) "Uh, you might be wrong." (Sarcastically, when asked if half assed costume attempt was Harry Potter)

Boobah

2007-10-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

I am sure if you don't have kids, you've heard all about how horrible they are, and how much harder they make it to go on three-day winery tours and and spend me-time sculpting your abs. All true. However, by what other mechanism would you encounter something like this?

Probably in Japan, something like Boobah would make complete, Swiss-watchlike sense, but this is the United States of America, where wordless gelatinous blobs do not levitate without an explanation.

Too tired to post

2007-10-21T22:19:00.001-07:00

Can only... type... elipses

It's basically a scary doll blog. OK?

2007-10-17T19:31:00.000-07:00

I am sure that when you learn to use a sewing machine, you are supposed to make curtain ruffles, or table runners, or some other sort of grandma-ready household geegaw. Certainly, the idea is not to make scary little lopsided 2" babydolls in argyle diapers.

What is wrong with me??

Larry

2007-10-14T21:07:00.000-07:00

You know those old folks who can build cabins out of driftwood and rusted nails, and sew bridesmaids dresses out of old table runners? Whatever happened to people like that? Everyone I know under the age of 45 can basically thumb-type real fast, knows how to record shows on a Tivo, and that is about the extent of their skill set. Within one generation, we have bred every relevant skill set out of the human race. Good work, technology.

With this in mind, I have recently become determined to learn how to use a sewing machine. A rag doll for charity seemed like a reasonable first project to tackle. How hard could it be to make this thing? It looks like a cotton lollipop.

Well, uh. It was hard. Somehow, my doll ended up looking like a small shark took a bite out of the side of his head. Have you ever tried to sew a circle? How did the eyes end up so huge? No, Larry is unfortunately not up to child-comforting snuff, and thus he will need to live with me, as a testament to my lack of relevant skills.

Hopefully, Larry II will be worth sending off.

Doll head

2007-10-09T07:03:00.000-07:00

Instead of blogging, I have been making weird dolls and lumpy bears out of old t-shirts. I am well on my way to being the dude who made a stuffed animal every day for 365 days, whom I would link to were his web site not in some 401 error hell zone at the moment, except that it usually takes me two days, which has so far only brought me to a total of four days.

If you ever plan to make your own stuffed animal, the rules are:

1) Do not learn anything about making stuffed animals or sewing. Just try to make one based on what you already know, which is probably nothing.
2) Do not be hurt if you hand one to a baby, and she says "weiiird," a word she has never used before, and hands it back to you with a scowl.
3) When you finish your first one, feel comforted by the fact that after the apocalypse, if you can still find rags and a sewing needle, you will be able to barter stuffed animals to zombies for dented cans, that is, if there is a market for homely toys during a nuclear winter. As a side note, once you are over 35, always decide whether any new pastime has currency in a post apocalyptic scenario. If it doesn't, consider moving on.

Steve, don't eat it!

2007-10-04T08:13:00.001-07:00

Although tiny dog is clearly struggling as a site, there are people out there who still write interesting content. For example, on Steve, don't eat it, you can read comical write ups as one man tries to ingest a number of dubious food products.

‽ ‽ ‽

2007-09-30T18:23:00.000-07:00

I'm told there exists a little-known punctuation mark called the interrobang, which is a hybrid of the exclamation point and the question mark, and is intended to replace the agitated alternating strings of these punctuation marks frequently following dubious, high-strung sentences. I am known to very frequently use this convention, and so I'm glad to hear there is a better way.

Before: Are you totally crapping me?!?!?!?!?!?!

Now: Are you totally crapping me ‽‽‽

Nice. Interrobang, it is.

More scary dolls

2007-09-21T11:15:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Flickr beat me to my idea about composing a blog featuring nothing but scary dolls. Several Flickr groups are devoted to this cause, including Creepy Dolls and Scary Dolls (which seem to overlap). Hundreds of pictures of evil dolls, just a click away. What more could you want?

How about hundreds of pictures of evil mannequins? Or a general mish-mash of frightening plastic people?

I love you, Flickr.

Bulldozer

2007-09-20T21:02:00.001-07:00

There is this construction site near my house that I keep meaning to take photographs of, but it's changing too fast for me to catch up. For years, it was an impenetrable fence of Douglas firs and blackberry thorns off a highway offramp, with a creepy, winding path blocked by a gate. On evening walks I've passed it hundreds of times. Sometimes, inexplicably, the gate would be open, and I'd take a few steps onto the path. In a little grove of bushes was an abandoned, waterlogged gray couch, that was somehow inviting, but in a gates-of-hell kind of way. I was sure if I ventured toward it and sat down, out of site of the road, that some meth addicts or rabid raccoons would take me down to Hades in a chariot. And so I walked on.

One day I walked past this little forest and became disoriented. There were acres of bleak, blue sky where the trees had been. I was inundated by the violent pine odor of a hundred bulldozed trees, now lying in stories-high mountains of crushed branches and mangled trunks. The couch lay broken, upsidedown, on a mound of trash. Toward the back of this vast lot was an imposing, gutted building with a moldy roof. It looked like a rec center or club house that hadn't been used in decades. The windows were blown out, and the doors were gone. I had never known it was there; it had previously been well hidden by the now-dead trees.

NOTICE OF CONSTRUCTION, read an imposing aluminum sign. 38 SINGLE FAMILY DWELLINGS, TO BE COMPLETED AUGUST 2008. Although it was a big lot, the thought of this many houses being shoehorned into it, like boxes in a storage unit, seemed improbable. And yet it's already happened nearby a dozen times: the bulldozers come, scrape a modest greenbelt off the land, and replace it with multiple rows of narrow, three-story town homes, separated by a foot of space.

I passed the construction site a few times over the coming weeks, kicking myself each time for not bringing a camera as the dilapidated club house appeared one day with its Southern face entirely torn away, and then one day, it was not there at all. Why had I never walked down the path on the days the gate was open, and sat on the moldy couch?

All this got me thinking about roadside ruins, those remnants of abandoned Americana we've all passed on road trips, that are each a micro-apocalypse of a certain irretrievable time and place. You're lucky if you catch one in any state of decay before the bulldozers arrive, and pave it over with condos or chain stores.

If you do, take a picture before it's too late.

Is tiny dog back?

2007-09-17T12:39:00.001-07:00

Tiny dog is back, sort of, which is to say that the person behind it is alive, and still knows how to post to it, but has spent the last several months of her daily picosecond of free time rambling about typewriters for a global audience of two.

Weak, I know. If there *were* to be content today, it would probably be an extended ramble about The Road, a novel that has sucked my soul like a 3000-watt flowbee, leaving me to question every candy wrapper and pencil shaving, and to ponder my defense strategy in the event of a post-nuclear cannibal invasion. Which I am partially convinced is actually inevitable after reading this book. My only solace is that I am well more than likely to be one of the billions who will be instantly seared into a grimacing carbon chunk and won't have to worry about scavenging bloated cans from wrecked oil tankers and beating back mutants with lengths of rusted pipe.

Oh just read the book already so we can discuss.

More scary dolls

2007-09-13T21:45:00.000-07:00

More scary dolls from the same eBay lot. What haunted toy graveyard did this seller exhume these dead-eyed playthings from? Dirt-smeared, kohl-eyed Victorian kewpies? Freckled, bulb-headed grimacing freckle twins with dull scissor haircuts? Soulless prairie wife zombies???

Someone should start a blog called Scary Dolls.

Someone was selling this on eBay

2007-09-11T22:13:00.001-07:00