Stupid TV Commercial # 31

Boy, this week's commercial is dumb. It's trying to get you to sign up for Dish TV service. Now at first that sounded alright to me, because dishes sometimes have moist food on them or milk in them. TV and a nice snack would be alright - but I guess it has more to do with the dish they put on top of your house to get the signal for the TV. We have one of those in our yard but we have DirecTV instead. Anyway, this Dish commercial has something to do with cowboys and dumb hats - the link between that and television provider service is lost on me.

Now I am not much for worrying about who provides what in this house, except for litter box service and food detail. But I do have to wonder why a bunch of cowboys with encephalic hats and localized excess testosterone are trying to convince me to get this TV service by using a company that has gone bankrupt. Then again, cowboy hats don't really mean marketing genius...

Famous Basset Hound Friday # 36

First of all: Happy Howl-o-ween! Second of all: it's another Famous Basset Hound Friday! Third of all: the weather has gotten colder here, and it's time for my winter coat to grow in!

But enough of the pleasantries. This week's hound is famous for her awesome greeting card, and it is Howl-o-ween themed to boot! She's also famous because she got some peanut butter to get her picture taken. Her name is Stinkerbell and she is only pretending to be a poodle - there are no basset costumes that are that good.

I wish we had peanut butter pumpkins here

Stinkerbell was a winner in Hallmark Greeting Card's contest, along with some other cool dogs and a few rotten cats. You can see her winning page here. We did not even know about this contest, because mom and dad don't ever take us anywhere on car rides anymore. The only reason we found out is because our Aunt Melissa sent us this card along with greetings from our puppy cousins Aksel and Chopper. Also I guess we have cat cousins over there but we have never met them - probably for the best, as most cats are rotten. But Aunt Melissa is very nice and she loves on us and tells us how beautiful we are. Chopper and Aksel are a bit too rough sometimes, but that's only because they are about twice as big as me. If they were my size I would totally kick their butts!

Anyway Stinkerbell is our newest famous hound!

Competition

Being the newest dog is nice - you get all the newest beds and toys and food bowls - and so I am always worried that mom and dad will get another hound and I won't be the newest anymore. As it is I have to always push my way between them and Rosco or Layla (even the cats sometimes!) to make sure I get all the attention.

So you can imagine my concern when they opened up a mail package the other day and said 'Oh a basset hound!' What? They are sending new bassets in the mail now? To MY house? Worst of all it was from Grandma! Let her house have a new basset! Three hounds is too much here already we don't need four! Mama has always said she wants to adopt more hounds that need homes anyway but I say three is a crowd!

Even WORSE, this hound howls like me! And it sings too! I can't sing! I howl better than Rosco and I make more noise PLUS I am the tallest. But singing is a trick I haven't learned yet. This new hound is going to take my place as the newest, most-talented hound! He even sounds all sad and whiney!  That will surely make mama want to spend more time with him.  He's got to go!

Rosco and Layla act like they don't even care!

I am not speaking to daddy right now

He is a big jerk. First he made me throw up the other night. I didn't know people could do this to us hounds but he found a way.

There I was, innocently chewing on a tasty treat he left laying by the fireplace. It smelled nice and smoky and yummy, and it was soft and chewy and it had a little plastic wrapper around it. The perfect thing for a hound girl to munch on at the end of her day.

Well when daddy saw I was eating that he went all nuclear on me. He yelled and told me no and said I was a bad girl. He made me go to my crate and I heard him cleaning it up. Then he and mama made me get in the bathtub. Bathtub means bathtime - but I was already pretty clean and they didn't turn the water on, so I was a little confused. Well daddy held my mouth open while he made mama put this stuff down my throat.

Now I know mama was doing this against her will because she wouldn't do that sort of thing to me. Daddy is the one who administers medicine and gross stuff. I wondered what the medicine was supposed to do because I wasn't sick or anything. He left and mama watched me and made me stay in the tub. I was pretty confused at this point and then it hit me - daddy had poisoned me! My stomach started gurgling and I started to feel sick. A few minutes later I was retching and throwing up my dinner, right there in the bathtub! Mama had to leave the room and daddy came in and watched me get sick.

THEN it was bathtime. He scrubbed me top to bottom and told me this wouldn't have happened if I didn't try to eat fireplace starter logs. Well, don't leave good-smelling treats like that laying out if you don't want me to eat it!

I was ready to forgive him this morning, but he got up really early and left us in our crates without giving us breakfast. That is a really good way to get on my bad side. When he finally came home he gave us our food and asked me to lay on the couch with him. I turned my backside to his approaches - I would have rather laid with Nibbler at that point - but eventually the warm blanket was too much to resist, and I felt like maybe I should forgive him. We had a nice nap and he rubbed my ears and my chest and told me I was pretty. Of course I already knew all that but it is nice to hear it, and we had made up.

Then later on he started to move the furniture around. He made me get off the couch and pushed everything into the other room, and made us all get in our crates. I swear he wants us to live there! When we finally got let out the living room wasn't all that livable - nothing to lay on in it anymore, and the only interesting thing left was paint and stuff. But of course us hounds weren't allowed to sniff this, we got herded outside and left there for a long time. When we finally got let back in, straight to our crates we went.

Um where did my couch go?

See what a slave driver he is? We FINALLY got to stay out for awhile, but of course with the furniture like this what good was it? And when we were outside barking at the neighbors he yelled at us to be quiet. We didn't get any scraps at dinner either, just our kibble. It's like daddy WANTS me to be angry with him.

How in the world am I supposed to live like this?

Famous Basset Hound Friday # 35

This week's famous hound is a dear friend of mine. She is another basset blogger like Layla and Breezy and me. Her name is Annie Oakley, and like the famous human of the same name, she is a trick shot. I don't mean with guns - we hounds don't bother with those things - I mean with her belly rub achievements.

A master at work

Our buddy Annie lives in California, which is a big state with lots of beaches and sunshine. She goes on walks to the beach all the time. As I understand it there are things like dead fish and kelp and dead birds that wash up on the beach. If I were Annie I would roll in those things all the time. She also gets to eat fresh vegetables all the time. I wish we were so lucky, all we ever get is moist dog food mixed with kibble, plus lots of toys and playtime with daddy and mama, and car rides and... OK I guess we are pretty lucky too.

Anyway - Annie and her blog can be found here - you should go check her out sometime. She is our newest famous hound!

Weird Word Wednesday # 17

This week's weird word is inspired by my mood.

The word is 'exterminate', which means 'to eliminate'. The reason I think this is a weird word is because the root word 'terminate' also means 'to eliminate'. For some reason adding the 'ex-' modifier doesn't change the word's meaning at all.

Usually adding the 'ex-' modifier makes it the opposite meaning. An 'ex-wife' is a former wife, an 'ex-convict' is a former convict, and an 'ex-basset hound' is what I would like to see happen around here three times.

But when you 'ex-terminate' something you don't actually bring it back to life. You kill it, just as if you 'terminate' it. This is annoying to me, but it's also useful to talk about dogs you want to get rid of - either word applies.

Dogs beware

There are no such things as squirrels

Layla and Rosco are fibbing again, I can tell. They keep talking about squirrels but I don't buy it. I've never seen a squirrel at either of the houses we've lived at. The yard smelled like something but we quickly discovered what it was.

Seriously? They are going to chase a stupid toad? Toads are too small to chase and they aren't fast either. They are the sort of thing a stumpy-legged hound gets excited about because they are too slow to chase real animals. Us long-legged girls need to dream bigger. See how I had to howl at them to get them inside so I could eat my dinner?

Squirrels? Yeah, right.

Stupid TV Commercial Sunday # 30

In the spirit of All Hallow's Eve, this week's stupid TV commercial highlights a common misconception among humans and Hollywood executives: that black cats (like me) are harbingers of evil spirits and witches. We're really just superb lovers in our sleek black form (just ask Beaker).

So our stupid TV commercial this week is the trailer for the 1989 stinker of a movie 'Pet Sematary'. In it, a human decides to bury his dead cat and child in an Indian burial ground.

This movie was made before my time, but it explores the ridiculous notion that reincarnated cats are evil and try to attack humans at their every opportunity. First, we are not evil. Second, we only attack humans at prime opportunities (like when they are sleeping). Third, if we came back from the dead, we would certainly take the time to groom ourselves and nap a lot. A zombie basset hound would've MUCH more plausible. I can hear them saying "cat braaaaains" as we speak.

Mr. King should stick to being a writer, not a moviemaker or a priest or whatever. Pet Sematary definitely was subpar to Cat's Eye as far as King movies go.

A map for mama

I am taking advantage of a dog-free house to quickly post this message. They are in the back yard barking at leaves or something but I only have a few minutes before they come tearing back in here and try to eat me.

This new house sounds great and all until you look at it through a cat's eyes. Then you realize that there is very little space where a cat can be free to lounge and lick themselves without fearing for a basset hound attack. I have included a map to show you just how bad the situation is - there is literally two mattress' worth of space where I am safe. And since they are both beneath mattresses I am not able to lay in the sun or chase my shakey mice at all.

So I'm not a big fan of the new house. The dogs can get at me even under the beds and bark at me. At least in the old house I had entire rooms to myself. The food and litter boxes are within plain sight of the dogs - so those of us cats with shy bladders have no other option but to wait until they go to their crates. Not to mention that stuff is on the other side of the house from the safe rooms.

So hopefully mama will look at this map and think about making the dogs live somewhere else, like Alaska or Botswana. I hear there are lots of basset hounds in Botswana. Let the Botswana cats deal with them.

Famous Basset Hound Friday # 34

Another week has gone flying by. This week we got to explore our back yard some more, and we discovered that there are a lot of leaves flying around. It makes it hard to remember where you have pooped, but fortunately we have our noses for that! Unfortunately... daddy doesn't use his nose for that. What good is a nose if you don't use it for important stuff?

Anyway, it's time for another famous hound! This week's hound was a major stage star back in the 1950s. He even helped launch the career of Elvis Presley, the king of rock n' roll! Quite the accomplished hound - he even wore a top hat to prove it!

OK you're doing good Elvis - now do that hip thing I taught you

Evidently Elvis was upset about having to do the song that way because the guy in charge of the show wouldn't let him dance and sing like he normally did. I personally think he should just be grateful to have been allowed to appear with such talent but I guess when they call you 'The King of Rock n' Roll' you get to act foolishly sometimes. If you want to watch Sherlock's patient guidance in action you can check him out below. And that's our famous hound for this week!

Stupid TV Commercial Sunday # 29

I know it's been awhile since we did one of these. The stupid dogs can chase us just about everywhere now. Nibbler is working on a map, apparently. Now that they are all finally sleeping I have the time to get my blogging in.

This week's annoying commercial flies in the face of everything I have seen dad do around here. In it this lady wants to eat her cereal but she can't because it's not morning time. Her solution is not the first obvious example...

OK first off - just eat the stupid cereal at bedtime. Human do that all the time. Second off - even if you have to concoct some weird mental justification for eating the food you bought for yourself at some unusual hour, don't go dragging your stupid Chinese New Year's dragon costume out of the closet. The neighbors will end up calling the police again.

Nutjob.

Famous Basset Hound Friday # 33

Well it has been a few weeks since we did a Famous Basset Hound Friday. I decided to go with a spooky hound this week because it is getting to be Halloween time. Halloween time is when all the kids in the neighborhood dress up in costumes and come to the house asking for treats. Now at first this idea really frightened me, because I do not want to share my puppy treats with the entire neighborhood.

But then daddy explained that they are actually getting people treats, which puppies are not allowed to have, because they are chocolate and toxic to dogs. I personally would like to try just a bite myself but daddy says no go. Anyway - because it is Halloween time, I decided to make our famous hound in the spirit of scary stuff.

So this week's famous hound is Walter the basset from the movie The Rage: Carrie 2. In this movie a teenage girl discovers she has psychic powers after the high school football team becomes jerks to her. Walter tries to keep her from going all psycho on them but his hound abilities are delayed after he gets hit by a car. Even though his psychic mama is getting ready to psychically take care of the football team she comes to her senses and takes him to the vet where he makes a miraculous recovery. But in the end he is unable to keep his mom from abusing her powers and she dies. This was pretty sad for me, but he does get to stay with one of the football players who was nice to his mama so I guess it is an OK ending.

Walter making an emergency trip to the vet

Boy if I had psychic hound powers I would float all of mama's delicious cupcakes down to the floor where I could eat them.

There would be nothing wrong with using my hound powers like this.

Our new home

Well fellow hounds and their lucky owners, we have moved. Normally I like to keep you updated on all the goings on but this week my mama has been sick and she needed my constant attention. If not for me and my stern glares that cat Nibbler would have tried to sit on her tummy where her stitches are and that would have hurt her. So I have not been able to blog with my normal frequency.

But now mama is feeling better so I thought I had better write about our new house. We moved a couple of weekends ago and didn't have the internet right away because daddy is lazy and takes too long to do anything right.

Here we are giving mama the hound dog medical approval to go back to work.

Our new house is great! It's not as big as the old one which sounded bad to me at first - I thought maybe some of my toys might have been given away to make room for something stupid like a cat condo - but what it really means is that there are hardly any stairs. I have to step down one little stair to go into the room with the fireplace and I have to step over the doorframe to go outside and bark at the neighbors, but that's it! No more up and down plasticy stairs anymore. No more places for cats to hide from me. The only room I can't go into is the litterbox room but I can stick my head through the fence to make sure the cats aren't planning anymore takeovers.

Breezy is doing her doggy duty here.

I like this new house.

The floors aren't very carpety so you need to make sure you take your naps on the couch, but that is OK - we have plenty of furniture to choose from now that the basement couch and the upstairs couch are all within our reach.

Moving is very hard.

I haven't seen any squirrels yet and we don't have as many neighbors so there is only one other dog I have seen so far. But the fence wraps around to the front yard so I can bark at mama and daddy when they leave for work. There is also lots of stuff buried in the yard and there isn't much grass so we can dig in it. Daddy doesn't like that as much and we get hollered at a lot. But he hasn't even unpacked all the boxes so he ought to just go back inside and let us hounds be!

This house needs to be better organized before we can tear around.

We haven't had a chance to walk in the neighborhood yet and daddy says it is not as big as the old one, so the walks wouldn't be as long. I am OK with that, I don't mind short walks. But he also said we might have to go for car rides more often and visit the dog park.

I just realized I have never blogged about the dog park! There are geese an everything! That will have to be my next blog entry.

Anyway that is our new house. So far so good.