Who Let the Dogs Out?

I love dogs like the next person, but not those little, mangy mongrels who live in the apartment next to me, across the landing outside my back door that exits from my kitchen. The canines are enough to drive me nuts. I can’t even make any noise while cooking without invoking their incessant barking. They go berserk if the refrigerator door slams shut.

Even my tapping on the computer’s keyboard atop the dining-room table gets them into a tizzy. They must have incredible hearing. Should I complain to the management office about my dilemma? Help me out. I need some suggestions.

The following is a recording I put together from the past couple of days. I’m thinking of e-mailing it to them. Maybe I should play this soundtrack loudly whenever the neurotic mutts start up. It can be sort of a doggie duet. Makes me think of the song, “Who Let the Dogs Out?” I’m sure you won’t listen to the entire nine minutes and thirty-three seconds of the clip. After all, it might drive you nuts too:

It even seems to make their owner bonkers as well, turning the young woman into Sister Mary Elephant. If you don’t know who that is, click the following comedy skit:

Ah, I feel better now, getting that off my chest!

From past essays about Publishers Clearing House, I noted how entering their sweepstakes is another thing that drives me wacky, vowing to stop licking stickers, not pasting them on the registration forms, nor sending in any more entries. Well guess what?

I’m still waiting for the Prize Patrol to deliver a humungous check, made out in my name and personally delivered to the front door of my flat with candy, flowers, and the local TV station for capturing my jubilation. Having mailed in several ingresses during the past few months, even ordering some of their bric-a-brac—which, by the way, hasn’t arrived yet—I sent in yet another this morning that came to me the other day in the envelope shown above.

An epiphany occurred before my throwing everything away. The correspondences from my past three entries specified a “Final Step Required,” like this one, making me wonder: when will it ever end? They just keep on establishing new sweepstakes, over and over, for dummies like me to keep wasting postage on the return envelopes. I like to think it’s helping out our beleaguered U.S. Post Office as a rational, however.

That’s OK. It gave me something else to bitch about in this week’s essay, prompting the scanning of the preceding illustration.

Spring is a month away, by golly, time for my beloved ospreys to return and give this old bird-lover more reason to tramp up and down the Delaware River for another breeding season. The pandemic’s lockdown prevented me last year from heading over to New Jersey for surveying the nests not seen from the Pennsylvania side, and taking an avian census. Now into week 50 of the pestilence, hopefully we’ll be back to almost-normal soon; and travel out of the state for joyriding will be permitted. If not, I plan on taking my inflatable kayak out on the river for the first time. Should be fun.

The most dreadful pop tune ever is “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.” In closing, here is number two on that abominable hit parade:

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