Him a good dog.
This is Zeke. He’s safe and all is well.
If you hang around the lefty-feminist blogosphere long enough, sooner or later you hear about Zeke. He’s our blog dog. Sure, he has his real life there in Pinole Creek, with his walks and his pig ears and god knows what Chris and Becky are feeding him. But he also exists here, in this series of tubes we call the internets, where everybody who knows Chris Clarke (which is everybody, independent studies have confirmed) knows Zeke.
Zeke is the store dog, the grizzled old guy taking a nap in the doorway. He’s the dog down at the end of the counter — the far left end — sitting rapt and patient as Dr. Bérubé feeds him cheese treats. The folks from Feministe and Pandagon and Pharyngula pat his head whenever they stop by, and Hank Fox always gives him a good ear scratch. Carl Buell has even painted his portrait. We love us some Zeke. He’s our blog dog.
Welcome back, Zeke.
Him a good dog. Him the bestest dog.
28 Responses to “Him a good dog.”
-
Chris says:
The pig ears, incidentally, are strictly for accepting graciously and then leaving on the floor or lawn. Some dogs, I have heard, actually eat them. Zeke saves them. I’m pretty sure we still have a pig ear from the George Herbert Walker Bush administration around here somewhere.
October 25th, 2006 at 2:24 am EST -
Violet says:
My own dog is sitting here rapt and patient as I feed her Cheez-Its.
My late dog Katie used to eat her pig ears. The things having a dog does to you: I’m a frickin’ vegetarian and I’m buying animal parts for my dog. Hooves and ears, in bags. Keerist.
-
Auguste says:
I’m pretty sure we still have a pig ear from the George Herbert Walker Bush administration around here somewhere.
Actually, it ended up in the White House again. We’ve been trying to make a silk purse out of it for six years now, but we’ve pretty much given up.
-
Burrow says:
The things having a dog does to you: I’m a frickin’ vegetarian and I’m buying animal parts for my dog. Hooves and ears, in bags. Keerist.
Cats too. You can have a vegetarian dog and keep it healthy, but cats are obligate carnivores so I couldn’t ever feed them the vegan cat food (even though they love it). I actually started buying them this food called Evo which contains only ingredients that cat’s systems are made to digest. I think they’re making up for my decades of non-meat eating, but I can be veggie, they can’t.
(Oh dear lord and the tuna flakes that they love so much stink to high heaven.)
-
Mandos says:
I love tuna flakes. Though I love spicy tuna rolls even more. But that’s expensive. So I should consider getting a can of tuna flakes one of these days.
-
Violet says:
Actually, it ended up in the White House again. We’ve been trying to make a silk purse out of it for six years now, but we’ve pretty much given up.
Good one.
-
Violet says:
Yeah, Burrow, cats need that animal protein. Did you know that they can’t taste sweet things? Evolutionary mutation.
BTW, Mandos: did you see the JuJu lady’s final meltdown at Pandagon?
-
Michael Bérubé says:
Actually, it ended up in the White House again. We’ve been trying to make a silk purse out of it for six years now, but we’ve pretty much given up.
Have you tried lipstick? I hear lipstick works, as long as you do a heckuva job and stay the course. Or something.
-
Mandos says:
Violet: I saw that. That was a bit of melodrama. At the same time, I still don’t think it was necessary to read her post the way your read it.
Anyway, here’s something else for the juju file:
Women are the life-sustaining resource. Dominating this resource via the male protection racket gives the boys the delusion that they are not largely superfluous to human existence, making them its biggest threat.
-
Chris says:
That encounter made me sad. I agree that there’s something wrong at the heart of Sara’s argument, and thought Violet’s criticism of it rather well founded. I think asking what else women can do to end misogyny in men is missing the point, letting men off the hook, and ignoring the remarkable progress that has been made in fighting misogyny. (As bad as things are now, who would trade now for 1950? 1850?)
But Sara is a wonderfully perceptive and astute activist, and I have found her writing invaluable. And she has a point about stridency, though perhaps not the precise one she thinks she has. I find her perspective on most things meshes remarkably well with the perspective our lovely and talented host here seems to have.
-
Paul Tergeist says:
May I suggest you put ‘down the patriarchy’ on the back burner until we get the constitution back?
-
Violet says:
Hey, Dr. Bérubé stopped by! I thought I saw cheese crumbs in this thread.
Does this mean I’m in the Network now?
-
Zeke T. Dog says:
Dear Doctor Socks;
I apologize for not seeing this lovely tribute earlier. I truly appreciate your good wishes. (I am, I will admit, a trifle mortified at how large my hindquarters appear in that photo!) Your gesture is truly heartworming.
A bit of canine humor there. I apologize.
I presume you are either a native speaker of English or otherwise fluent, as your command of the language appears impressive, even erudite. I have noticed, however, that there seems to be a misprint or typo in your blog post title. You have the third person masculine personal pronoun in the objective case above, which is clearly incorrect. If you intended said pronoun to refer to me, the correct construction of the sentence would involve the nominative case, to wit: “He is a good dog.” It is also possible, though it would seem less likely given the lack of previous referent, that you intended the initial personal pronoun to refer to my Alpha, in which case the possessive case is correct: “His good dog.” Note the loss of the indefinite article “a” in this construction.
I hope you do not find me too presumptuous in correcting your grammar, Dr. Socks. I merely seek to repay your staggering generosity of spirit in the way I best know. If I have in any way offended you, I meekly apologize.
Licking your hand in supplication, I remain,
Zeke
(dictated not read)
-
Violet says:
Zeke! Dearest Zeke –
Thank you so much for your charming letter. I’m impressed by your command of standard English grammar and grateful for your kind attention to the perceived deficiencies in this post.
You have the third person masculine personal pronoun in the objective case above, which is clearly incorrect.
Allow me to explain.
Actually, the sentence “him a good dog” uses the canitive case, a dialectical feature of the English spoken in a narrow region of Virginia roughly bounded by my living room, my parents’ kitchen, and my brother’s place down the way. This dialect has no official name, so for our purposes we may refer to it here as Socksian.
In the Socksian dialect, the canitive case is used when speaking to or about dogs in an affectionate manner. The canitive takes the function of the nominative case but the form of the corresponding objective pronoun, so that where a standard English speaker would say, “he is a good dog,” a speaker of Socksian dialect would say, “him is a good dog.” Except that the verb to be is almost invariably omitted when the canitive case is employed, so the most likely construction is “him a good dog,” as in the title of this post.
Other features include the use of non-standard superlatives such as “bestest,” where a standard English speaker would employ the more generally accepted “most betterest.”
I would say more but I’m rather indisposed this evening (too many pig ears last night!). But thank you very much for stopping by and I hope so much you’ll visit again.
Warmly,
Violet
-
Paul Tergeist says:
HELLO, THE CONSTITUTION HAS BEEN REPEALED!
Oh hell….http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kat5yTDvfg&NR
-
Paul Tergeist says:
-
Paul Tergeist says:
-
love2all says:
Just wanted to say I see a lot of dogs, I work for a humane society so I’m used to seeing all kinds of dogs on a daily basis but I just melted at this picture. Aww.. you can just SEE how nice and benevolent of a dog he is.
I kinda want this picture for my desktop wallpaper.. it soothes me and puts me at ease.
-
Chris says:
I kinda want this picture for my desktop wallpaper.. it soothes me and puts me at ease.
Meanwhile, I don’t understand all this whining about minor issues like the Constitution, which is a transient piece of legal paper that has been more honored in the breach and only in a small section of the world. There’s a mass extinction in progress, Paul. Try to get past your blindered, human-centered parochialism.
-
Infidel says:
…has been more honored in the breach…
…and only in a small section of the world…Once more into the breach.
-
Paul Tergeist says:
I now come here almost exclusively for my daily Infidel fix. Violet is brilliant but ethereal. In fact, she’s TOO smart. We commoners cannot relate. Infidel is something else. No one knows what. But I like her……..or him… I don’t know that either.
-
Violet says:
Paul, Infidel is a man and insane. That’s probably why you’re feeling sympatico.
-
Violet says:
HELLO, THE CONSTITUTION HAS BEEN REPEALED!
Yes, I know.
-
Chris Clarke says:
You don’t get it. Posting on anything else is
borgeousboulgewfrivoloous. Stop all this lipstick and blowjob blogging, Socks! -
Violet says:
I do get it, Chris; I understand that if I were to devote this blog entirely to posting about our Constitutional crisis, I could single-handledly turn this thing around. I’m just reluctant to use my power. Sure, it would work, but would it be ethical? Wouldn’t I be subverting the very concept of democratic action that we wish to restore?
-
Paul Tergeist says:
Paul, Infidel is a man and insane.
-VioletEr…..you say that like it’s a BAD thing. It bothers me when you bandy the ‘I’ word in conversation. Suppose the NSA thought you were talking about the President, who we all know is doing a GREAT JOB and is NOT INSANE.
-
Chris says:
I do get it, Chris; I understand that if I were to devote this blog entirely to posting about our Constitutional crisis, I could single-handledly turn this thing around. I’m just reluctant to use my power.
Give in to the dark side, Violet!
And while you’re up, I want that MacArthur genius grant.
And a ticket to Bolivia.
-
Infidel says:
Sanity= Kill for Peace
Sanity= Revoke Rights for Freedom
Sanity= Deny God for Science(when your an idiot)
Sanity= Accept God and Deny Science(when your intellegent)
Sanity= Seek the love of a Woman and be misogynistic
Sanity= Seek the love of others and be misanthropic
Sanity= uh…Whatever George Bush says
« When Godbags Attack | Home | No Balm in Gilead »
