Month: December 2004

No. 6 on the list of gassiest dogs

I was torn between post­ing this here or on my (some­what san­i­tized) fam­i­ly web site, Mason being a mem­ber of the fam­i­ly and all. But I decid­ed here.

A com­pa­ny is mak­ing a prod­uct to “stop pet gas before it starts.” ((The com­pa­ny was called Cur­Tail, but it appears that they have gone out of busi­ness since this was orig­i­nal­ly post­ed in 2004.)) They go on to add, “At last an end to those dread­ful moments in your liv­ing room when peo­ple don’t know whether to look at the dog or at each oth­er.”

We have no such prob­lem. Mason’s farts smell like broc­coli. When any of the rest of us fart (or poop, in my infant son’s case) it does­n’t smell remote­ly like broc­coli. Just the oth­er night, Mason was nes­tled up to Tiffany on the couch, each qui­et­ly mind­ing their own busi­ness, when Tiffany start­ed to gag. The fart­ing last­ed a good half hour, and by the end you might have been able to see a green broc­coli cloud hang­ing over the couch. It real­ly can be quite awful.

Well, now, this com­pa­ny has released a sur­vey of pet own­ers, a sur­vey of which dog breeds are the gassi­est. Poo­dles (of any size, appar­ent­ly) rank sixth. To which I can only say, glad I don’t own a Ger­man Shep­herd.

Here’s the list:

  1. Ger­man Shep­herd
  2. Mutt
  3. Labrador Retriev­er
  4. Box­er
  5. Dober­man Pin­sch­er
  6. Poo­dle
  7. Cock­er Spaniel
  8. Rot­tweil­er
  9. Bea­gle
  10. Dal­ma­tion

Get Lost!

If you haven’t been watch­ing Lost on ABC this sea­son, you should. It’s by the team that makes Alias, it’s like a big-screen movie on the small screen, it has hunky guys and hot women, it’s incred­i­bly tense, and Hur­ley is one of those great char­ac­ters you won’t see any­where else (his char­ac­ter did­n’t exist before the actor audi­tioned, but they liked him so much they wrote a part for him).

They start over tonight with the two-hour pilot. ABC. 8/7c. Don’t miss it.

See: Offi­cial ABC Lost Site, now with cool plane crash sound effects!

Cool little snowflake charity

I was hunt­ing around after a chil­dren’s book illus­tra­tor and ran across this site, a can­cer char­i­ty called Robert’s Snow. The orga­niz­er is a chil­dren’s book illus­tra­tor, who got oth­er illus­tra­tors to con­tribute ceram­ic snowflakes with unique decorations/illustrations/paintings on them for auc­tion.

The auc­tion is pret­ty much over, but you can still see all the snowflakes. As an artist(ic per­son), graph­ic designer(like guy), and gen­er­al cre­ative sort(of bloke), I found the vari­ety of snowflakes cool. Click through to see the larg­er ver­sion, they are much bet­ter than the thumb­nails.

They are being auc­tioned on eBay, and are fetch­ing between $200 and $1000 so far, with a few days left to bid.

Some of my favorites:

Martha Alexan­der The back makes me think of my son. Christo­pher Bing I like the wood­cut, black and white look. Christo­pher Denise Beau­ti­ful com­po­si­tion, and a cute sen­ti­ment. Sarah Dil­lard So pret­ty. Jar­rett J. Krosocz­ka I love the back of this one, too. Loren Long Love the long­ing feel of this. David Macaulay You might remem­ber him from Cas­tle or Cathe­dral. Meghan McCarthy Love the col­ors of this one. Anik McGro­ry Great com­po­si­tion, love the water­col­ory flakes with the more pre­cise bear. Eric Rohmann Made me laugh for the look on the rein­deer’s face. Mag­gie Swan­son Would make a great orna­ment on a tree. James T. Williamson Edward Hop­per snow­fake: the name alone is worth admis­sion. Jane Yolen Last, but not least, this one almost made me cry.