Dog Days

Posted on July 23, 2012 by RL CRABB

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16 Responses to Dog Days

  1. Douglas Keachie says:
    July 23, 2012 at 6:41 am

    A Most Excellent Nutshell!

    Reply
  2. George Rebane says:
    July 23, 2012 at 10:02 am

    Nutshell (n) – a firm covering for nuts.

    Ah yes, another irrefutable example of how the rich deny the poor their fair share of something that the rich themselves had handed to them by Mama Gummint. It all becomes so clear.

    Reply
    • Tony Waters says:
      July 23, 2012 at 3:51 pm

      I think that this cartoon is more about the need for gummint to guarantee to the rights of the honest, against the greed of the bullies.

      If all the bully dog can do when the government steps in is mutter Communist, or socialist, it demonstrates a certain lack of imagination. George, perhaps you could recommend a more creative epithet for the bully dog to mutter?

      Reply
      • Greg Goodknight says:
        July 25, 2012 at 9:01 am

        Tony, the more our government had decided to redistribute income, the less there seems to be and the bigger the disparity between haves and not-haves, and in California, the biggest, meanest dogs are the public employee unions.

        Here’s the end of a classic Monty Python sketch on the subject, where Cleese in his prime tries to meet the right balance.

        “He steals from the poor and gives to the rich. Stupid bitch.”

        Reply
    • Douglas Keachie says:
      July 23, 2012 at 5:55 pm

      Glad to see you recognize that being a self made person on a planet with no other humans or contributions means that all you happen to acquire there, is YOURS. On a planet where you got lucky enough to get transferred to the most prosperous nation on earth (didn’t get blown apart during WWII, has huge reserves of just about everything, except maybe lithium, you have been GIVEN an opportunity to go for it. That doesn’t not include the right beat the crap out of all others along the way for personal gain, or having no concerns for those who may have not been given a sound mind in a sound body. It also does not include the right to pretend that you live on the planet with no other humans, and that therefore, anything you can acquire is all yours, and that you OWE nothing to the government or the others. The more successful you are, the better you have gamed the system, but you don’t get to GRAB IT ALL.

      Everyone that travels 49 from Nevada City to North San Juan in less than 20 minutes, owes one heckova debt to those who came before, and made those trails, then roads and bridges, and finally paved roads, not to mention those who invented the motorized vehicle and improvements, and to the government that cradled them the whole way. You may quote me.

      Reply
  3. Michael R. Kesti says:
    July 23, 2012 at 10:05 am

    The first frame clearly establishes that the dogs are welfare recipients. One would have his handout while denying others’ and the other, after getting his, asks, without first expressing any gratitude, what else he can get.

    A most excellent nutshell, indeed!

    Reply
  4. rl crabb says:
    July 23, 2012 at 10:36 am

    I suppose if George can loosely toss around labels like “Marxist” for the Prez, I can surely call out a dog for his dogma. Woof.

    Reply
  5. Judith Lowry says:
    July 25, 2012 at 8:01 am

    Actually, I know that dog Butch.
    He is descended from a fairly disciplined line of champion Dobermans.
    His grandfather was an actor and appeared on television and in movies like The Doberman Gang and They Kill Their Masters.
    Butch was handsome and intelligent enough for a film career, but like his father and his uncles, he went into law enforcement.
    He was a fresh rookie in NYC, when the attacks on 911 occurred. His skills at scenting humans for rescue was put to the test in the following days. After repeated failures to locate live survivors, crushing depression began to set in. Even older more seasoned dogs were experiencing this phenomenon. Many were retired from the force after that.
    But Butch was still young enough to be of service so he was enlisted in the military.
    He graduated at the top of his bomb sniffing class and was deployed to Afganistan where he witnessed some horrible things, including the violent death of his human partner.
    Diagnosed serious PTSS and in great despondency, Butch was transfered to a recovery and retraining unit, but he was no longer able to perform to the satisfaction of his handlers, so he became surplus and was sold to a private party.
    Butch was then taken to L.A. where he was introduced to training for the personal protection of a very well known rock star. The next years proved interesting and Butch began to understand humans in a way he never had before.
    He liked his owner well enough, but he did not care for the dysfunction, the noise, the parties, and always with the new females coming and going leaving their weird chemical scents behind.
    The worst came with the arrival of the three Rots. They were a bullying, arrogant bunch and Butch was supposed to team with them. He tried, but fights would break out. The Rots would always make it look like Butch had started it and in the end it was Butch who was taken to a shelter.
    That’s where he is in the above cartoon. Funding is pretty low for these kinds of shelters and after the chow he got in the military, or the steaks from the rock star’s personal dog chef, the shelter diet of Acme canned dog food, and not much of it, is the worst food he has had to endure. Acme dog food is made in China, so it’s nutritionally worthless and full of plastic fillers.
    So, Butch is starving, aging, has arthritis and his general health is in decline.
    He is hungry, lonely and has terrible hemorrhoids which make him cranky.
    Plus, he’s pretty stressed out, he’s been at the shelter a little too long for comfort.
    That’s why when some street dog, who parties constantly, never worked a day in his life and owes years of back child support, bounds in to the shelter, expecting to take his food, well, that’s just the limit for poor old Butch.
    But he has to make nice until someone adopts him or he’ll end up in that room where dogs go in and don’t come out.
    In the last frame it appears that he is taking revenge the only way he can, by leaving a little something for the shelter folks to clean up.

    Reply
  6. Judith Lowry says:
    July 25, 2012 at 4:33 pm

    Thank you Michael,

    You see? I do “get” some things after all.
    Each of us is really a mix, so whaddayasay we all keep it intelligent and creative here on what I think of as an Art Blog.
    No need for low blows.
    It’s all good.

    Chow!

    Reply

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