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Friday, July 08, 2011
Good Dog.
PSMITH 2012. Take a moment today to raise your gingerbread, and remember.
* * *
Chain Gang and company have done an excellent job keeping InstaPunk lively over the past few months, but InstaPunk himself has been AWOL. An imaginative truant could think up plenty of excuses -- death in the family, moving to a new home, illness, the holidays -- but honesty compels a truthful accounting. The primary reason for the long absence is a six-month-old boy named Psmith. He's a thing called a Scottish Deerhound. Most people have never seen or heard of them, and those who have perpetuate the notion that they're a breed of dog, albeit an unusual one, of ancient lineage and imposing size, developed for the purpose of overtaking stag in the open field and wrestling them to ground with tree-like legs. Of course, those who actually live with deerhounds learn speedily that they are not dogs at all, but wraiths of Scottish lairds killed long long ago in the fruitless battle against the innumerable enemies of Scotland. You'll note that deerhounds exhibit no trace of redeye; the anomaly disclosed by color photography is an artifact of a human soul trapped in an animal body.
* * *
Three or four times a day, two greyhounds and a deerhound charge out of the big white box into the open air, and they see EVERYTHING. The deerhound in particular feels compelled to comment whenever he sees a turkey. He says, "HOO HOO HOO HOO HOO." Then he springs about five feet straight into the air and says, "HOO HOO HOO HOO HOO."
Due North: "HOO HOO HOO HOO HOO."
* * *
It's precisely when they take actions of various sorts that Presidents get into so much trouble. Psmith is the perfect antidote to that problem. He has no platform except for his own mammoth deerhound posterior. He has no ideas of any kind. If elected President of the United States, he would serve by standing (and sitting) there quite handsomely. He might want some gingerbread, but a multi-trillion dollar economy like ours ought to be able to handle that.And just imagine how soothing and reassuring it would be to the America people to know that their President is snoozing on his great big couch in the Oval Office rather than talking to people, giving orders, making speeches, signing bills, and getting dangerous folk the world over all riled up about problems nobody can really fix.
We're running Psmith (the 'p' is silent) on the Do-Nothing Party ticket, and nobody can beat his experience. He's been doing nothing with imperturbable consistency all his life. He's not even asking for your vote, because that would be doing something.
* * *
We told him it would be okay. He was a couple weeks away from his sixth birthday. And now I'm assailing myself with the idea that the dumbass actually believed us. That if he could make it from the car to the foyer, our promises would be fulfilled.
But that's not true. Psmith did that last journey from the car to the vet foyer on sheer courage. I know it because the thought of it brings me to tears every time I think of it. He did it because we asked him to. Because we asked him to. And he made it the whole way.
O Lord. Give me the courage of Psmith to do one impossible thing and I will be content.
Give me one moment of the beauty of Psmith and I will lay down my pen.
* * *
He's seven today. I didn't get a chance to meet him before he left. But Mr. and Mrs. Boss love him. So I do too.
Good dog. Good pooch.
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