Puppycide

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

I'm not a pet owner, so I have no idea what it must be like to leave your dogs outside to bark constantly for hours on end and pester your neighbors while you run errands or do whatever like get a tan or have a long brunch at Toast. I dunno how someone in the immediate vicinity of our alley has not shot any of these yapping dogs that get left outside for hours on end.

In the building to the right, someone lets their tiny dogs roam free inside a patio-like area. After a while, they start whining, then crying, and then yelping. Sometimes, I slide into the depths of bad neighbor tilt with their incessant yapping. And when it's bad, it's LOUD. That's always the case, right? The little insecure doggie is the one causing the most trouble.

To the left of us are the hipsters with big dogs. They howl. They growl. They usually keep quiet until a bum approaches the trash bin and then they unleash their disapproval of the strange scent. As far as security or safety goes, those big dogs have some purpose, which is why I put up with their disturbances. Their owners don't leave the dogs outside too much, but once in a while those dogs can get worked up over squirrels climbing on the utility poles or scurrying along the phone wires. Oh, and sometimes feral alley cats take a wrong turn and end up on the big dogs' turf.

The little dogs that cause me the most trouble. The shrill barks are like nails on a chalkboard but while getting your balls nicked with a dull razor simultaneously. The only thing worse would be forced to have to watch The View in the live studio audience without getting wasted beforehand. Those little demon dogs won't shut the fuck up, especially because the owner puts the dogs out at the worst times -- when I'm trying to enjoy a nice afternoon writing session in the living room with the windows open.

Movies have been made about writers and distractions: The Lost Weekend, Funny Farm, Barton Fink, Adaptation, and The Shining. This is a real problem that Hollywood has tackled many times over since the days of Billy Wilder. The studio suits feel the scribes' pain, at the least, they feel as though they can make money by telling the stories about disturbed writers who are anguishing and longing to create but with one obstacle that stands in their way.

Who knows... maybe living in L.A. might drive me totally insane and in some pharmie-induced fit of rage, I'll snap one afternoon when one of the dogs just goes a little too far with the yapping, and who knows what will happen. I can only imagine what the headlines would say.

The LA Times might have something SEO-friendly like...

Writer drowns sack of dogs.

Well-known blogger and poker reporter, Pauly McGrupp, was arrested Monday morning by Beverly Hills PD after savagely drowning two Shih Tzu's belonging to an elderly neighbor. The soaking wet carcasses were found stuffed in a plastic bag underneath a Mini Cooper in a nearby parking garage.

But you gotta hope one of the NY tabloids will show my mugshot along with the boldfaced headline...

DR. DRUGGIE THE DOGGIE DROWNER!

A graduate of a posh Park Avenue prep school is now in police custody after drowning two Shih Tzu's belonging to a neighbor. McGrupp was under the influence of prescription narcotics including Oxycodone, Adderral, and Xanax. According to a police spokesperson, Ketamine, a drug widely used by veterinarians as a horse tranquilizer, was also found in his possession. Investigators are trying to determine if the Ketamine was used to incapacitate the Shih Tzus, or if McGrupp has been using the drug recreationally.

When asked by reporters the reasons for his actions, McGrupp insisted that Son of Sam had left several comments on his blog encouraging him to commit the canine murders. In an ironic twist of fate, serial killer David Berkowitz, a.k.a. Son of Sam, suggested that howling dogs in his alley were the ones who gave him instructions to murder women in 1976-77.

Maybe I should just tell the cooks from the Chinese restaurant down the street about the annoying dogs. The cooks take naps in their cars down the street during the afternoons after a long morning of prep work. They could understand the necessity for some sort of civility and lack of yapping doggies. The cooks are also silent assassins, well versed in knife work, who can slice and dice the purse dogs in a matter of seconds. All they have to do is deep fry the doggie meat, and pass it off as pork rolls.

That's just part of the daily plight in the slums of Beverly Hills. Just like the lawyer from across the hall who rarely spent any time here. We noticed the eviction noticed taped to her front door when we returned from NYC/Connecticut. I thought she was moving out on the weekend before we left for the East Coast, but it looked like a rush job, which makes a little more sense now because she was trying to get the fuck out as quickly as possible. I wonder if she found a loophole in her lease or was just that fed up with our landlord that she decided to stop paying him until he did necessary repairs.

Our building was slated for inspection by the LA county of somethingorother. Guess what day they picked? That's right... 4/20. The worst possible day to have county officials and your landlord traipsing through your homestead... on the holiest of high holy days. I cleaned up my office, Nicky did the dishes, we hid the bong, and also removed the mobile meth lab and padlocked the dungeon where we hold all of the Thai sex slaves.

I'm dubious of everyone. Who knows who is a spy anymore working for an alphabet intelligence agency. Our fear mongering leaders have turned their constituents into mindless consumer-driven paranoid fraidy cats ready to drop a dime on anyone who looks suspicious or goes against the herd. Lord knows the new law they passed in Arizona is making anyone with brown skin jumpy in Southern California. Who knows when the Governator will sign an edict to round up all the illegals in LA and toss them into FEMA camps where they will be put to work building iPads for Steve Jobs.

Luckily, the city inspector with his clipboard and flashlight were in and out of our humble abode by noon. The inspector noticed a couple of trouble areas in our apartment which he pointed out to out our quiet, but guilty-looking landlord. I'd lay good odds that less than 50% of the blemishes that inspector pointed out will actually get fixed, not to mention the laundry list of other problems we have to live with on a daily basis. Maybe our landlord just did what everyone else does... grease the inspector.

Maybe I can hire the city inspector to snuff out the loud pursue dogs across the way? That could be a snazzy Law & Order episode with Danny DeVito playing a corrupt city official who has been covering up the fact that his staff members have been routinely executing barking dogs left alone inside NYC apartments. There's a self-righteous motive to all of this because the DeVito character feels as though he's saving these canines from their miserable imprisonment inside of cramped NYC apartments and forced to piss on fire hydrants and take dumps in filthy side streets. I always thought that the city was a horrible place to own a dog since dogs need to be free and run around and get exercise and not confined to 420 square foot cells and hurried piss breaks twice a day.