Hello, it's Tim-with-the-ridiculous-pseudonym again, here with another dose of suckage for you. When I first started to write these little columns I worried that I might write something that would offend people, and thus allowed myself to be convinced to take on a pseudonym. Then I worried that I didn't have the weird humor it took to come up with a fake name that was interesting enough, and so I let Jeff Somers choose "Tim the Angry Clown", whatever that's supposed to refer to. Now I think maybe I ought to have a dramatic unveiling of who I really am, complete with phone number and email address, just to see if anyone's reading this.

What sucks today? I'll tell you what: dogs. Cats too, and any number of other animals kept by people for their amusement and callow comfort, but let's start with dogs.

Walking to work every day I am struck by the sudden and forceful knowledge that whatever I was put on this Earth to do, picking up the feces of another mammal was not it. As I march purposefully with my fellow workers, off to another day in the salt mines, I pass through a great many well-to-do Manhattan neighborhoods, where the people who apparently work at home or have no need for jobs are out walking their dogs. It's easy to hate dogs when you spend so much time, then, stepping over and around them as their idiotic owners let them stand wherever they desire despite the huge number of people trying to walk through, and avoiding the fragrant piles of waste they leave steaming everywhere. It's also easy to have contempt for the people who then cheerfully bend down and pick up said waste, holding it in their gloved hands and smiling dimwitted smiles down at their puzzled pets.

I have nothing against dogs or any other domestic pet, really. I don't blame them, after all. Their owners on the other hand are people who have decided that following an animal around and picking up its waste is a good way to spend their existence. I can't help but hate them.

Then, of course, there is the fact that dog owners also walk their dogs all over the place and have them piss everywhere. Granted, it ain't easy to pick up piss once its been pissed onto the ground, but that doesn't excuse the fact that the dog will squat and piss wherever its instincts tell it to, and then its owner will walk away whistling while a pool of yellow liquid just sits there. 

I suppose it shouldn't bother me. But its forces me to walk on pissy sidewalks, and I resent being forced to do that. If they want their dogs pissing outside, then goddammit they can walk the fucking creature around their property and have it piss there, where I won't be forced to walk through it, slogging my way through a sea of animal urine. If your dog can piss on the sidewalk, why can't I? Our urine is chemically similar.

Cats at least learn how to defecate and piss in the house, and even take the time to bury their droppings, unless you're one of those unlucky cat owners whose pet regards them as below their social level. If you want to act like your pet is more important than other humans, and possibly yourself, behind closed doors, be my guest. Far be it from me to tell you how to live your life. When you bring your dog outside and do it, though, I think it becomes my business, and I can and will comment on it...

...at least I will comment on it anonymously behind this pseudonym. So I guess the ridiculous name has a purpose after all. I think it's more an issue of having dogs in the city. In the country they can run around in the woods barking and pissing discretely against rocks and trees, which are already full of animal piss and bug excrement anyway. A dog in the city is just an affront to civilized manners.

Bah! None of you are reading this anyway - or are you?. Until next time remember that everything sucks.