Of course, there is nothing wrong with disliking dogs, cats, birds, or earthworms. (Although, to be honest, I’m convinced there must be something deeply amiss about people who do not adore earthworms.) There is no need to analyze a mild dislike for anything or anybody. However, when an emotion begins to interfere with your normal daily existence, it’s a sign for you to address the issue.

I didn’t simply dislike dogs (which, yet again, is a normal, healthy thing to do). I detested them passionately. Seeing a dog from a distance of 1,000 feet would be enough for me to disrupt my daily walk and run home in a huff. Obviously, this is neither healthy nor normal. 

So here is a reenactment of how I solved that problem.

Analyst: When you are walking down a road and you see a dog, what feelings do you experience? Imagine yourself walking right now. Suddenly, you see a dog. What is it that you feel right now?

Me: Anger! I feel anger and resentment.

Analyst: Who are you angry with?

Me: Dog owners. [A long rant about the inconsiderate dog owners follows but I will spare you having to go through it.]

Analyst: Stay in this emotion of anger and resentment towards the dog owners. What word comes to mind that you could use to describe the dog owners?

Me: Traitors! They are traitors!

Analyst: Whom did they betray?

Me: [A long rant about how I totally understand that this is completely irrational because I know that dog owners didn’t betray anybody.]

Analyst: That’s OK, we are not trying to address the rational here. Whom did the dog owners betray?

Me: [Another long rant about how I totally understand how weird I sound, etc.] Me. They betrayed me.

Analyst: How did they betray you?

Me: [Yet another long rant, etc.] They betrayed me by having a dog.

Analyst: Did anybody have a dog among your friends or family when you were growing up?

Me: No, nobody did.

Analyst: Go back to the feeling of being betrayed by somebody with a dog. Who was that person?

Me: I can’t think of anybody.

Analyst: Stay with the feeling. Remember another situation when you felt this way.

Me: Well, actually, I felt this way when I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. I felt the same anger and resentment.

Analyst: OK. Who had diabetes in your family?

Me: My grandfather did.

Analyst: How did your grandfather feel about dogs?

Me: Oh. Oh, oh, oh. I cannot believe I forgot this. [A long rant on how stupid I am for having forgotten this and wasted so much time, etc.]

Analyst: It’s OK, tell me, what was it about your grandfather and dogs?

Me: When I was little, I really loved my grandparents. But then my grandmother died of cancer at the age of 54. And my grandfather remarried. For some reason, my mother felt mortally offended by his remarriage and did everything she could to distance me from my grandfather. My grandfather and his second wife bought a dog. And my mother kept telling me, “You see? Your grandpa doesn’t love you. He betrayed you for a dog. He now loves the dog more than you.” I was 7, and I think I kind of believed that.

After this insight, my terror of dogs started to recede. I’m not planning on buying a dog or donating money to dog shelters but at least I can now be around a dog without freaking out.

Of course, now everybody who is reading this feels vaguely cheated. “And you needed 31 years and 94 hours of psychoanalysis to arrive at this huge revelation?” people will ask. “This was all completely obvious!”

The problem is, however, that the roots of the problems you have been struggling with for decades are just as obvious to everybody who isn’t you as my problem with dogs is obvious to everybody who isn’t me. We cannot access our own subconscious. This is why all talk of self-analysis is bunk. Even if somebody had told me why I detested dogs, I would have immediately forgotten, rejected, or dismissed this information. 

I also read a suggestion online to enter the following into Google Translate and press sound:

“pv kkk pkkk pvpvpv ppkk pddd bschk bschk pv zk pv bschk pv pv pv bschk bschk bschk kkkkkkkkkk bschk bsch.”

Curiously, Google identified the language of this phrase as Czech and asked me whether instead of “pv kkk pkkk pvpvpv ppkk pddd bschk bschk pv zk pv bschk pv pv pv bschk bschk bschk kkkkkkkkkk bschk bsch” I actually wanted to say “pv kkkkkk pvpvpv ppkk pdf bschk bschk pv zk pv bschk pv pv pv bschk bschk bschk kkkkkkkkkk bschk bsch.”

I felt like I was part of a very weird conversation between me and my computer.

But go ahead, do it.

Have you ever entered the words “do a barrel roll” into the Google search engine?

Do it and thank me later. Seriously, it’s really cool.

Turns out Twitter is not entirely useless. See this hilarious collection of tweets people wrote to mock the reporting of the pumpkin riots.

Dear readers,

I’m overworked and exhausted to the point of hugging strange dogs out of sheer desperation. (See visual proof here.) And you know what needs to happen when I feel this way. Right you are, you get to cheer me up by voting in a new poll. You can see it in the sidebar. 

Let me remind you that it makes me really really happy when I see people vote on my polls. I have no explanation for this endearing quirk but I will share it if I chance upon it.

Does anybody know what this is? Have you ever tried it?

Obama comes to a bank and tries to withdraw some money.

“Can I see your ID?” the teller asks.

“I left it at home,” Obama says. “But I’m President Obama, don’t you recognize me?”

“I’m sorry,” the teller says. “Could you demonstrate some skill that would prove you are Obama?”

“Like what?” the President asks.

“Well, the other day Tiger Woods came by and he hit a golf ball straight into a small wine glass. Then Pelé came by and he put a soccer ball straight into a garbage bin on the other side of the road.”

“OK, I have no idea what to do in this situation,” Obama says.

“Oh, President Obama!” the teller exclaims. “So good to see you! Do you prefer twenties or one hundred dollar bills?”

 

One of Putin’s favorite weapons in his arsenal of humiliating everybody he comes in touch with is being from 1 to 6 hours late to all of his appointments. In Russia, his chronic tardiness is notorious. One of his favorite trick is to announce that he will be at some public event, surround the place where the event occurs with a crowd of security personnel, and let the guests, the performers, the athletes or whomever to stew in their juices for 3-4 hours until he deigns to arrive.

Finally, however, there is somebody who has the backbone to stand up to Putin.

After dropping my car at the mechanic’s, I found myself marching down the highway towards our town. Thankfully,  two gentlemen in a worn truck stopped and offered me a ride. We all huddled in the front seat and rumbled into town.

In the back of the truck there was a beautiful dog called Snowbear:

She was the quietest, politest dog in the world.

Here is me with Snowbear:

I haven’t slept at all tonight thanks to an ill-considered cup of chai I had at 10 pm, hence the exhausted look.

I think this adventure counts as hitchhiking,  and that makes me feel very American.

I wish public radio just accepted advertisement instead of running these endless programs soliciting donations. At least, advertisement offers me value instead of just wasting my time.

I just listened to an endless segment on donations only to discover that a program on the evils of “oversexualized music” that perverts 7-year-olds was to follow.

I’m not in the best of moods as it is because I’m on my way to a car mechanic and, as it turned out, the only mechanic in the area that is qualified to service my car is “a luxury vehicle auto service” with a pretentious frenchified name.