I don’t know how grocery stores work in other parts of the world, but if they work anything like the ones around here do, you’re familiar with the concept of a club card. A store’s club card is your way of telling the world that you’re too smart to pay $47.99 for a jar of pickled beets and would prefer to be charged $2.99 like everyone else on planet Earth. And then when you pay for the beets, they make a big deal about the money they “saved” you, as if that fools anyone over the age of two. Continue reading

Have you heard of Uncanny Valley? Uncanny Valley is the name of a phenomena (doo-doooo-doo-doo-doo) in robotics when a robot looks and acts like a human being, but slight, hard to finger imperfections cause revulsion in people. What was intended to be beautiful is now perceived as horrifying because it just doesn’t quite look natural. It’s why Tori Spelling is so off-putting. Continue reading

Although I grew up in the Chicagoland area, my parents both hail from Canada, our Great White Neighbor to the North. This explains my love of hockey, a trait that seems to have been passed down to me genetically along with a tendency to wear flannel shirts, funny hats, and a love of beer so profound that it causes a severe speech impediment, which other people call “speaking French”. Continue reading

My kids are enjoying Spring Break this week, which is great for me too because I don’t have to nag them to get their homework done, or get out of bed so they won’t miss their bus, or practice lines for their play about how important teeth are, or any of the other million things I have to nag them about that makes school more exhausting for me now than when I actually went to school myself. Seriously, my parents never had to do any of this shit. I did all my homework in school because I was bored out of my mind and had nothing better to do, at least until I discovered the joys of mentally undressing classmates. Continue reading

Although I am justified in lecturing my daughter about the importance of school, I feel like a hypocrite when I do it. Not that I didn’t get good grades when I was a kid. I was pretty much a straight A student, with the exception of the Jr. High years when I was an awkward bundle of hormones and uncertainty. Jesus, those years sucked ass, big-time. The only thing that kept me from throwing myself off of a bridge was the possibility that someday an equally awkward and uncertain girl would let me feel up her goodies. Anyway, the reason I feel like a hypocrite when lecturing my daughter is simple: College. Continue reading

When you’ve got two young boys like I do (ages six and four), they will wake you up in one of two ways: If everything is all right, they’ll wake you up by jumping directly onto your crotch while you sleep. If they’ve done something wrong, you’ll know it because they will walk quietly into your room and say, “Hey, Daddy?” Then they’ll solemnly inform you that they jammed half of the living room carpet into the garbage disposal, “on accident”. Believe me, waking up with a blow to the nether regions is preferable. Continue reading

I woke up this morning to a pleasant surprise: Dogs on Drugs was nominated for a Bloggie in the category of Most Gratuitous Usage of the “M-F” Word by a Weblog Written by Someone in a Mental Institution. Needless to say, this nomination has been a long time coming, and I’d like to thank the members of the… Hang on a second… Holy shitballs! I was actually nominated for Best Writing of a Weblog! Well, that just goes to show how far hard work and determination moderate hacking skills and a pint of ether will take you. What can I say? I’m honored, grateful, and for some strange reason I’d prefer not to analyze, incredibly horny. Continue reading

I did a lot of hiking over the weekend, and ran across something interesting. Arizona is a fairly unique state, and there are things you can see here that you only rarely see in other places, if at all: The Saguaro cactus, the Roadrunner, the single-digit IQ person who gets elected governor… On Sunday, I ran across a herd of wild horses (that’s a couple of them in the main photo). Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “That’s great, Greg. But can you somehow turn this wonderfully serene tableaux into a story involving horses and dangerous drugs?” Why, yes. Yes, I can. Continue reading

It takes a special kind of person to have kids, the kind of person that is able to drop everything at a moment’s notice, break numerous traffic laws in a high speed dash across town, and take their child to the ER (where he is known by first name). This is because kids are accident prone, spending half their time reeling around like tiny little drunkards. Actually, I take that back. That’s an insult to drunkards. I drank my ass off in college, and I only fell down and hurt myself once, and I really had to work at it. I was trying to jump down two flights of stairs, 8 steps at a time, using only my left leg. I broke a bone in my foot, and spent six weeks learning how to stagger on crutches. But I had an excuse: Extreme intoxication. Kids need no excuse other than that they’re kids. Continue reading

Since I’ve moved into the new house, my dog Mojo spends a lot more time indoors than he used to. This is because my ex-wife is a dog-hater who used to stomp on his tail while he was sleeping. Or she didn’t like dog hair inside the house. I forget which. The point is, Mojo now growls at anyone who weighs more than 350 pounds. Continue reading