Maybe if you wag your tail

Remember Leo Buscaglia? He was the guy who was always telling people they should hug more often. Amazingly, however, a hug is too frosty a greeting for the person who's peddling this T-shirt I saw recently in a catalog: "Greet everyone as you would your dog."

I'm wondering how this person greets his or her dog. Here is how I used to do it:

"Hola Pollypoo! Puppypup-poopypoo sweetie bum-bum que pasa wazzup what's happenin' what's goin' on... UGH!!-" (wiping mouth with back of hand) "-okay that's enough of that, oh yes it is Miss Puppy, oh yes it is, you're a sweet puppy, yes you are" (patting dog's haunch) "spanky spanky, Polly wanna cookie?" (give store brand dog biscuit later found to have been tainted with melamine) "oooh what a good girl eatin' your cookie. Now go outside go poopie!"

And on a rainy or snowy day, I might grab a towel and wipe her down. It would hardly seem proper to do that to a human. Dogs and humans have different needs; that's why we treat (and greet) them differently.

I realize that the intention here is "greet everyone warmly," but even that is silly. I don't greet everyone I see the same way because I don't feel the same about everyone I see. I think a civil "hello" is sufficient, while my grandparents inspire a more enthusiastic response. In fact, I think it'd be insulting to my grandparents if I seemed just as happy to see the waiter as I was to see them.

I see crap like this all the time on T-shirts and bumper stickers and coffee mugs. Crap that might sound sentimental or inspiring or deep, if you don't put a nanosecond's thought into it; but just plain stupid if you consider it at all. A much better T-shirt caption would be "Don't be an asshole." (I'm sure such a shirt exists, but I never get those kinds of catalogs.)

It's probably too much to ask that the words on a shirt be anything but shallow. After all, if there's anything more shallow than what's skin-deep, it'd have to be the stuff you wear on top of your skin, right?

Does anyone even like this stuff? I'm guessing no, because I hardly ever see anyone wearing these vapid things. They must be given as gifts by people who give even less thought to gift-giving than they do to the dopey words they read. Yeah, it can be hard to pick out gifts for some people, but some gifts suck more than others, and...

I feel a rant coming on, but I don't have time for it now. I've got plenty of bile stored up on the subject of Christmas shopping, and I'm sure eventually I'll blow it all out in the form of a noxious blog post around Thanksgiving.

I know these catalog people and T-shirt peddlers are just trying trying to make a living. All I ask is that they leave the poor dogs out of it!

Useful Spanish of the day:
Te extraño, mi preciosa.
I miss you, my precious.