Rhymes with Blog

The next person to write and ask whether I am the Fake Steve Jobs will be getting a virus neatly planted on their hard drive by one of my hacker friends. (Don’t believe I have hacker friends? Just try me).

I’m still trying to understand why Daniel Lyons, the Forbes reporter who was outed (login sadly required) today as the man behind The Secret Diary of the Steve Jobs by the New York Times, used a mug shot of a terrier to illustrate the post about the unmasking. An exploitative and cowardly move, even by human standards. What’s even more insulting is that people are taking the plug-ugly Pets.com mascot lookalike in the photo for me! Disgusting. I’m seriously considering reporting this to Animaux Sans Frontières.

Yesterday I wrote that, in spite of all the SUVs in my neighbourhood, I did not believe it to be a hotbed of criminal activity and wondered why the security blimp was flying over us so frequently of late. Turns out that while our neck of the woods proper isn’t exactly miscreants-ville, there are areas not far from here which do fit this description. The villages of Patna and Bagatelle, to be exact.

J. Paul Serengeti (my best friend), who is homeless and therefore gets to go whereever she wants, has been to these places and she says it’s no picnic. Folks are getting shot, J. Paul tells me. Gang activity is on the rise (gangs, J. Paul says, are the equivalent of what we in the dog world call “packs”). After discussing these matters through the fence today, the two of us got really depressed, though within five minutes we came back to our senses and remembered that we’re only animals. As J. Paul likes to say, “Give us the vote — then we’ll give a s**t.”

The government of my country has invested in two security blimps. They’re supposed to help catch criminals, I believe, though I heard the housemate saying the other day that only one of them is working at present. Every so often the red one flies over our neighbourhood, which, to my knowledge, is not a hotbed of criminal activity, though I do often wonder where these people find the money to buy so many SUVs and why they tint their car windows so dark. The blimp makes a whirring noise as it passes overhead, which makes me wonder how effective it actually is at catching criminals. The way I see it, the average human miscreant, even factoring in his/her sub-standard auditory faculties, is likely to hear the blimp coming in the distance and have more than enough time to take cover.

While the blimp may be a little noisy, however, the sound it makes is hardly deafening, which has me and J. Paul Serengeti (my best friend) and a few of the other neighbourhood dogs very concerned about a certain canine living down on the avenue. I heard the housemate saying the other day that every time the blimp passes over the neighbourhood, said individual runs and hides himself under the family SUV (a Mitsubishi Pajero, I believe). None of us has ever spoken to the animal, as he tends to keep to himself, which, we’re thinking, is further evidence that he might have something to hide.

J. Paul (who is homeless and therefore finds all sorts of things on the street) found a prepaid cell phone the other day which seems to have enough money on it for one phone call. We’ve been saving it to make a crank call to KFC, but we’re thinking it might be better used to call the police and turn our colleague on the avenue in. What do you think?