Sunday Top 10: She Shoots Kittens, Doesn't She?

There is a dog in this apartment. Yeah, a live one, not the ones that are chopped up and served with Sweet and Sour Sauce from Empire Corner. I'm not "into animals," as I think I've said before. Animals make me sick in many areas of my body: 1. My nose&eyes&head because of allergies, 2. also in my stomach when they do things like crap in public or lick my face, or if it's a big dog and it leaps to the door and then tries to lick me in the you-know where. Basically I don't understand why anyone would have a large dog in their home, I think they are mostly gross, and I would hate them a whole lot if many of my favorite writers (e.g., Caroline Knapp, Pam Houston) didn't love large dogs.

I don't even want a person to lick my face, except maybe Christian Slater. Even that is pushing it.

The thing is, I may not like animals all that much, but that does not mean that I do not have a soul. People seem to get these things confused. They like to coo to their dog/cat/lizard: "Marie isn't nice, she doesn't love you like I do." Yeah, shove it.

My roommate LA (she replaced the AlAnonitute), who is really quite lovely, is keeping a dog here for the weekend. It's been a rough week for me and animals, as the quality of my heart and capacity for love and empathy has been questioned due to my reactions to the presence of cats in ML's apartment and now this goddamn dog in mine. Also I just went to the deli and there was a freakin' cat there. I live in New York City. I don't understand. When I had a puppy in Ypsitucky, Michigan, it ate three lamps and my books and peed on a lot of stuffed animals and actually literally ate my homework too.

Furthermore people are bound to give me shit about the fact that I don't like turkey on Thanksgiving. This is part of the animal theme, even though it seems like it isn't. It is troubling that I do not enjoy turkey. Eating it. I think it tastes like animal. I mean, I love turkeys too much to eat them. Yup.


That's the dog, right there, eyeing me and thinking about licking my face.

P.S. I'd like you all to know that after telling the dog "SHUT UP! I am going to KILL YOU! Don't ruin my tights, bitch!!" I apologized, petted it a little bit, and just like--in general; we had a moment.

The point is that I am not heartless. There are lots of things that are related to animals that I do like.

TOP TEN RELATIONSHIPS I'VE HAD WITH ANIMALS

10. OSCAR, my ex-dog and light of my ex-life
So, as I've mentioned before, I used to live in a condo with my boyfriend who loved animals and insisted that we purchase a dog. As I also might have mentioned, I cried louder than Oscar when we drove home with him. Aside from being a gigantic pain in the ass, Oscar was a cute little creature and I liked him sometimes better than my boyfriend.

Below we have a film montage displaying that I did successfully interact with this animal. In the first one, I am talking about Oscar's relationship with our stuffed animal, and in the next, I don't know what I'm talking about really.


9. RAMONA QUIMBY'S CAT, PICKY-PICKY
Once I did a book report on Ramona and I made myself a t-shirt with a "Q" on it with the whiskers, like Ramona did. I wore roller skates. It was hotter than hot.

8. MONKEYS
I love monkeys. I'd own one if it was legal. Also, because monkeys are almost human, I think that they could probably figure out how to go to the bathroom without me, since that part grosses me out. Not as much as wet Golden Retrievers gross me out, but still.

7. GOLDFISH CRACKERS
Once I believed that there was one goldfish in every bag that had an actual smilie face on it. Now I know that isn't true. I also know that we live in a aristocracy pretending to be a democracy, that you never win those claw-animal games at the arcade, and that my grandmother is Santa Claus.


6. CAT
I once lived in the West Village with Lindsay and one time we saw a mouse and then we both freaked out and Lindsay was crying and screaming and wouldn't leave her bed until we found a man to come over and rid us of this problem. In order to prevent future mouse encounters, which kept me up at night ever since Carrie Bradshaw found a mouse in her bed, Lindsay got a cat. It was actually more or less adorable, and didn't shed all over me and make me sick. I called it 'Cat,' like Holly GoLightly, but Lindsay called it 'Moo.' When she went out of town, I had to deal with the litter, which made me semi-suicidal.

5. ANIMAL, the Muppet You know how Animal would just like, totally scream and run around like "WANT! WOMAN!" or "I WANT TO EAT DRUMS!" when someone tells him to beat the drums? I mean, he never used pronouns or anything. I think we all feel like that sometimes.

Confession: I just took a three-minute break from writing this blog post to pet the dog. It's kinda growing on me, now that I'm not trying to sleep and it's not trying to ruin my tights with it's claws.

4. Look, Stephen, I'm Talking About You!
There was a pretty serious (and by serious I mean amazing/hilarious) conversation happening in my comments section for my previous blog post. Arguably, the comments, taken together as a collective whole, are actually better than the blog post itself. I'd like to help Stephen in his quest for popularity (though really, aiming to oust Haviland is a bit ambitious...) but I couldn't really think of anything about Stephen that would relate to the topic. I looked at his myspace thinking maybe he had posted a photo of his Mom with a cat or something. This was the closest thing I could find to animals or animal behavior:

3. PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON, THE LAST UNICORN, CHUCK E. CHEESE, and the cast of 'OLIVER AND COMPANY' I like fake singing animals the best. I've actually never seen "The Last Unicorn," but Stephanie always said it was one of her favorite films of all time. Personally, I prefer "Oliver and Company," which was the most under-rated Disney film of all time (besides "Newsies") and featured fantastic tunes from Huey Lewis, Billy Joel and Bette Midler. The lucky few (aka my mom and dad) were able to view a dramatic re-interpretation of "Perfect Isn't Easy," performed by yours truly, on my futon with lighting by my desk lamp. Do you have "Puff the Magic Dragon" stuck in your head now? I sure do.

2. CHEESEBURGERS
Because my soul is not only deep but kind & gentle, I'm not so good at eating animals. Basically I can only eat animals that do not remind me of actual animals. Like, basically that means I eat only grilled chicken (usually in the context of a salad, it has to be pretty heavily marinated) and cheeseburgers. Though honestly I have not had a cheeseburger in some time. Hm. Luckily, cheeseburgers have nothing to do with actual animals, so they are delicious. They are also not kosher. That's fine, because G-d loves me no matter what.

1.STUFFED ANIMALS, E.G RYAN THE DOG
I absolutely still sleep with a stuffed dog named Ryan, because Ryan Clayburn gave me this dog for my 18th birthday. Yeah, even if people are sleeping over, I kinda do this trick where I roll over so they have to be the spoon-ee while I am the spooner and then I can still hold my dog named Ryan, who loves me unconditionally.