Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Sage, smelly ponderings


Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I find more and more that I'm asking myself questions I never did before: "will people think I was a good person after I'm gone", and "have I made a real difference in the world" and "how young is too young for a puppy to have scotch and a cigar".

I've enjoyed whiskey and cigars for more years than I can count (that's not true, I have counted up to a hundred before) and admit I have enjoyed them more often recently, since I no longer partake at all in the traditional American vices of deep fried sugar coated sugar lumps and all you can eat pasta with butter soaked dough globs. (And a diet Coke, please.)

 So, they are really my only two "vices". OK, that and sometimes accidentally swearing like a construction worker. And hitting random strangers. But that's it!

 "Scotch and cigar time" is a time honored tradition, dating back thousands of years, invented by wise, wise old men who delicately and expertly crafted the most bitter, nasty smelling and tasting substances in the world that would gross out most women-folk enough that the men could finally have just a LITTLE time to themselves. Horrible, nasty stuff that tastes GOOD. Alchemy at its best.

Honestly, the only thing I do not like about cigars and whiskey is how horrible they smell to my wife. And that I have to give someone money to get them.

 But my older dog is smart and... well... good. It took us getting a second dog to realize that she is actually one of the most obedient and morally upright dogs in the world. So she respects the sacred boundary set long ago by Scots and Cubans. And she also recognizes FIRE... BAD. Just like Bambi and every single other normal mammal.

 But the younger dog is retarded. OK... "spirited". Whatever. He immediately wants to shove his snout in the glass and up to the cigar smoke. I KNOW he knows it is not actually food, since we don't set most of his on fire. And even in dog years, he is barely seven, so I am pretty sure he is not "legal".

After my repeated reprimands and empty threats he backed off and I am now watching as he is carefully seeking out the smelliest patch of grass and rolling in it. About a month ago, I discovered it was in the remains of a cigar butt he stole from my ashtray the second I turned my back. THIS IS NOT NORMAL. I don't need to read a book on Corgis to know this.

 Now, I know what you're going to ask: "what the heck is he talking about, does he even have a point?"

 I am glad you asked. No, I guess I am just figuring that we all have our ways to unwind. Maybe it is eating a half a... oops, whole... pizza... or setting expensive Honduras leaves on fire and puffing their tasty, tasty, nasty fumes ON PURPOSE... or rolling in the stinkiest patch possible and somehow being proud of it.

 I think it is a guy thing. I have to admit that watching the puppy run around, enviably free and unencumbered by the restrictions of adulthood and brains... at least his vice isn't $7.00 a pop. Maybe he isn't stupid.

 OK, he just vaulted the fence to attack a dog four times his size, I take it back. I gotta go.