Sawyer’s real true love:

sesquipedalophobia - The fear of long words. Kind of ironic.

Finnegan is doing well with his potty training. Sorta. He’s getting really good at signaling to go out to pee, and has had only one accident in 4 days. But he’s not getting the hang of signaling to poop. And I’m going to have to put him in the bathroom for 10 hours for the next two days, while I work, because Megan is in Baltimore. I need to try to change my schedule.

But yay, Megan is in Baltimore! She’s visiting friends. So I got to deep clean my apartment today. That made me happy. Soon, I hope she will have a job, and an apartment of her own.

Back to Finnegan. He’s been great thus far, and the only things he has chewed up have belonged to Megan. To wit: One cell phone; one cell phone charger; one slipper; two cat toys; one book. He did eat my headphones, but I left them dangling enticingly. And they were cheap.

I added more pictures of my boys!

This is all Joe Biden’s fault.

On Saturday, I read a story on CNN about party poopers being angry at Joe Biden for buying a german shepherd puppy from a breeder (instead of rescuing a shelter dog). I wanted to see a picture of Biden’s new puppy, and the first image I found was on pet finder (click here if you want to see the cuteness). While at petfinder, I am utterly powerless and must look at puppies.

And I fell in love.

I found a beautiful little beagle/shepherd mix named Max, and by the end of Saturday, had determined to get him. However, my initial instinct was right — Max was far too cute to stay in a shelter. He was gone. In the meantime, looking at more puppies, there was another little guy trying to win my affections. On Sunday, Jackson and I drove down to West Virginia to meet him.

Finnegan (which was NOT his shelter name, because shelter names are DUMB) was said to be 6 months old and potty trained. He loves other dogs and likes to play with cats. He’d been brought to this shelter on Halloween, and no one had put in an application for him. This is a kill shelter, and his time was coming up. So on top of being adorable, he played on my heart strings. I put in an application, he got neutered, and this morning, I drove down and picked him up.

I don’t think he’s 6 months old — I think he’s more like 4 months old. He’s got a bit of growing in to his paws and tail yet to do. And he’s not potty trained. But, he’s beyond cute, and he’s saved, on Christmas Eve, no less. He’s my little Charlie Brown Christmas Puppy!

So, without further ado, meet the newest addition to my family: Finnegan.

Click here for more pics.

Merry Christmas!

Fuck John McCain.

“Does it worry anyone else that every right-wing debacle in the last fifty years involves the same twelve assholes?”

Is the internet has brought us nothing else, there is, at least, Literal Music Videos.

Friday marks the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and it looks like the Gulf Coast is about to get smacked again. This is the current projection for Tropical Storm Gustav:

As you can see, it looks like it’ll make landfall early next week. Reports say New Orleans can’t withstand a Category 2 storm in their current condition, and this already projects as a cat 3. It could also just sit in the gulf for another day or two and ramp up to cat 4 or 5. Governor Jindal in Louisiana is looking at starting evacuations as early as Friday.

If it makes landfall, and it’s gonna, but if it hits landfall hard enough to again breech the levee’s, we’re going to have to have a serious discussion about rebuilding one of the oldest and most flavorful cities in this country.

I like puzzles too. I’ve even done a Simpsons photomosaic before, and I consider it cheating to look at the box.

Look, you communist. It is not cheating to have a general idea of what the puzzle looks like! This one frustrated me, so I decided to show to kick its ass.

I’m a project person. I need something to keep me busy at night after work. Now that my walls are painted, I’ve turned to jigsaw puzzles. I went yesterday in search of new ones.

I found two very difficult puzzles. The first is a Simpson’s puzzle, 1,000 pieces. But it’s a photomosaic puzzle, and I have never done one of these before. Each piece has its own little picture, and they will combine to be a big picture of Homer.

The second puzzle is a Lost puzzle, and, in keeping with the spirit of the show, it does not show you what the puzzle looks like on the box. I basically have no idea what this thing is supposed to be. It is also made of 1,000 pieces.

And, because I am, apparently, a masochist, I bought these puzzles at Half Price Books. So I have no assurance that they each contain all of the pieces.

I’m an idiot.

I found another project, as well. I’ve been made a Team Coordinator for the Obama campaign in my neighborhood. I’ll basically be in charge of a team and a bunch of volunteers, and will coordinate things with our field director. It doesn’t pay anything, but I intend to go mad with power!

PS Our President is a tard.

Last week, I had an adventure. And it started with a phone call.

[Brian] You HAVE to come out. I demand you come out!
[Me] Meh… I’m not really in the mood. I’m washing my hair and this show about serial killers who –
[Brian] You don’t understand! The Furry convention is in town!
[Me] … I’ll be there in 10 minutes.

And thus I spent my evening in a downtown bar called August Henry’s. I’ve been there before, but not like this. You see, it was karaoke night.

I spent my evening in a bar. A bar filled with furries. A bar filled with furries singing karaoke.

I could not make this up if you paid me money.

So, OK, normal downtown bar, now overtaken by furries. Some wearing tails. Some wearing ears. Some wearing tails, ears, and dog collars. One chick dressed as a bat. Anyway, this was not my first time around furries, as –

Allow me to interject, me. Why the FUCK is the furry convention always held in Pittsburgh? Because it is. Google Anthrocon. I dare you. Despite your wildest wishes, it is not, in fact, a convention for Anthropologists. Regardless, every year, Pittsburgh, for some utterly horrific Sodom-and-Gomorrah reason, gets the furry con.

Anyway, this is not my first time. While I have never seen the furry convention before (by dent of my not-paying-attention Super Power), I have seen grown men, in public, wearing a tail for no earthly reason. Usually at PAPA. However, this is my first time being around them at what… I must assume?… is their some-what-natural habitat.

Now then: Karaoke. I have sung in the Sydney Opera House. I have never been drunk enough to subject myself to the humiliation of karaoke. This makes me special. Also special? The guy with the tail and collar who changed “99 Red Balloons” to “69ing Gay Raccoons.” Not so funny? Doing the entire oeuvre of pop/rock music consisting of any mention of any animal. I think if I heard one more off key rendition of “Hungry Like The Wolf” I could have slaughtered the entire bar and gotten off with a fine. A $50 fine.

Oh, but I am being sidetracked! Because, you see, shortly after my arrival, the bar, filled with furries, was then filled double, by MEN GETTING OUT OF THE PIRATES/YANKEES GAME. So, 1 bar, drunk furries singing, drunk baseball fans demanding more drinks.

And me.

And then, after 11, came the “normal” karaoke group. One of them asked me why all the furries smell. I answered “Musk.”

So now the bar is at triple capacity. And, right on cue, at 11:40PM, come the full fursuit crowd. During a rendition of “Welcome to the Jungle.”

I seriously felt like I was in a surrealist film.

We leave the bar around 12:30, to head elsewhere, and Brian, a gay man (mind you) says “They’re all so friendly! I love the furry movement!” Another of our group reminds him about the two “foxes” who proclaimed they’d demanded litterboxes in their hotel rooms. “But why are they so nice?” Brian asked.

“Because,” I said. “This is their pride parade, Brian. This is the one weekend out of the year where they get to wear their suits out in public, and loudly and proudly proclaim ‘I am an amorphous animal of some type with a huge human penis!’ Surely, as a gay man, you can understand that.”

“Yes,” he replied. “I suppose.”

“I –” I stopped short in awe of the scene unfolding. As we rounded a corner, a literal parade of 50 fursuits came at us.

“I just don’t understand why they pick Pittsburgh.”