You know what I hate, dearest reader?  That’s right: small, yippie dogs whose owners get sick of listening to their incessant yipping and banish them to the backyard for the night, where they yip and mewl and whine and bitch and generally piss me off.  Just like the one that lives behind me and ruins virtually any night of the year I attempt to go to bed with the window open.

So tonight is July 4.  I’ve heard a lot of friends make a lot of noise about how small explosions tend to freak the living shit out of household pets, a plight to which I am not entirely unsympathetic.  Their pets are, no doubt, the very epitomes of good and quiet behavior.  I wish them and their pets all the best.  But it is not their pets that have kept me up through the night with their incessant pusillanimous yipping.  No.  It’s this one, that has already been yipping it up all afternoon.

I do my best to ignore all holidays.  But some holidays, like tonight, can’t be ignored  (it sounds like Beirut outside (which is fine with me: my startle reflex doesn’t respond to gunshots or explosions.  It’s the damndest thing)).  Anyway, if I’m forced to acknowledge a holiday, any holiday, I always celebrate it with the same theme: vengeance.  So it is this spirit of vengeance that I wish you, Captain Cuddles, and your wretched and neglectful family a very happy Independence Day.  Sleep well.

N.P.: “Black Powder” – Motor