Republican Debate From the Viewpoint of the dog and the coyote

The Dog
You know I really think Mitt could have done better if he just didn't strap me to the roof of his car and drive to Canada. Hasn't he heard about the SPCA? I'm a dog! I'm not that dead grandmother in National Lampoons Vacation although Mitt does seem a lot like Chevy Chase now that I think about it. But it's no wonder he looked kind of wimpy next to the Coyote killer from Texas. A man who would strap a dog to the roof of the family car can't be expected to be the great defender of Social Security. He sure wimped out of that one. He didn't call it a ponzi scheme but he didnt' defend it either.

The problem with a guy like Mitt is that he saw nothing wrong with putting me on the roof and letting me end up with bugs in my teeth and my ears permanently blown back. When we got to Canada he's like, how'd you like the ride Rover? Imagine what a guy like that will do to the American people? He just doesn't get it. He thinks it's perfectly fine for a dog to inhale a seventy mile an hour wind for six hours! So I looked like someone had just blown back my hair with a blast furnace. To Mitt everything was just fine. You know why? Because he rode in the nice warm car below while I froze my tail off! Is that the kind of guy you want for your President? Woof.

The Coyote:

That aint nothing.  Let me ask you this: what kind of a guy goes jogging with a .380 Ruger with hollow point bullets? Think about that one. Let's see sweats, socks, tennis shoes, headband, IPOD, Ruger. Come on. Somebody with some serious issues carries a gun when they for their workout. Can anybody say PARANOID. PSYCHO. WACJOB. I can because I'm the one that he shot at! First of all let me say for the record that wasn't his puppy I was sniffing after. And secondly what business was it of his. In fact I was just walking across the field to see what all the commotion was when BLAM BLAM BLAM. I look up and see this WAC JOB in a powder blue workout suit with those over sized headphones like out of that movie Starsky and Hutch, unloading like' John Wayne.

This is a residential neighborhood and the guy is shooting up the place like it's the OK Corral. Do you really want a guy to be your President who packs when he goes for his morning jog? Or starts shooting at some innocent Coyote because I was crossing a field and there happens to be a puppy on the other side? Imagine what this guy would do to people who need a little extra help though hard times. BLAM BLAM BLAM. That'll take care of them. I mean and then the guy reloads and fires another full clip at me! Yeesh. Come on. Is that normal? Do you want some psycho in a powder blue workout suit with headphones listening to Yanni blasting away at your dog? Because I could have been your dog, we look about the same.

Anyway. I don't. And he wont get my vote or any other Coyotes. And as far as that puppy is concerned. It turned out he was stuffed animal someone left in their garbage. Mr. Secessionist  didn't tell you that one did he? Mr. Powder Puff protecting Snoopy from the big bad Wile E Coyote. Give me a break. I'm telling you and you heard it here first, you dont' want this guy for your President. Because this guy is straight out nuts!

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man

A Book By a Dog

Well I just read The Art of Racing in the Rain. There are two things I would point to after reading this book with a dog narrator: one, there is value to the kindle, and two, always read the first few pages. Alright. The whole Kindle revolution brings up the same advantages of the IPOD. You don't have to buy the whole CD. Or you don't have plunk down eighteen dollars to read a book by a dog. It is not that The Art of Racing in the Rain was bad, it is just that by choosing to have the dog narrate we are limited to what he can interpret. He is a dog after all.

And saying that you have to wonder what the author was after. Well, why not have the dog narrate the book? It is new. It is different. And the dog was very Zen. He thought of the afterlife and then spoke to us from the afterlife and then he came back as a...well, I won't tell you. Needless to say the authors work was cut out for him when he made this decision. I will tell it form the perspective of a dog...now how can I get that dog into all the scenes?

Well  he doesn't. When I wrote Tobacco Sticks I used a thirteen year old I had to get in all the scenes. In courtroom scenes I became creative and used other people, newspaper articles, literally having my narrator peeking in keyholes. The problem with any first person narration is that you are stuck in the person (or the dog in this case) head and everything has to filter through the canine brain before it reaches ours. Now this dog got a lot of his information from the television, from his master, from hearing, from a Zen knowledge of the Universe and racing (auto racing).

There were a few scenes where the dog just claimed knowledge and we went with it. Fine. A literary first person can do this. Prior knowledge. Well, prior dog knowledge. Of course the rubber meets the road when the dog has to interpret sex scenes. Our dog did this by well, comparing human sex to dog sex with some knowledge of anatomy and then again, we just went with it. There were courtroom scenes as well our canine friend was able to give us the nuts and bolts declaring more than once humans just think dogs don't have a clue, but they do.

By the books end our dog narrator moved on to the great dog pound in the sky. I must admit after finishing the book I didn't look at my golden retriever the same. I stared into his brown eyes and said to him: do you really know what is going on? To which he stared back and essentially said: Woof! Now like the dog narrator he might be hiding knowledge from the oblivious human. I will say that I kicked him out of the bedroom.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January