Everybody always wants to know what's up with Barry.
I used to say, "A small one," which the best people thought was hilarious but some people didn't get.
So I started saying, "Chingón", because with one word I could tell if the inquirer was cool or not, but the lack of cool people was depressing.
Now I say, "California hiking dog," and people just nod.
The truth is that nobody except Barry knows what's up with Barry. He came to us from the mean streets of Santa Maria via DAWG in Goleta, where they reckoned he was part chihuahua, part labrador, part terrier, and part whippet.
(Photo by Roger Nisbet, between the Rock Garden and Gibraltar Road)
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Tags: barry, chingón, california, hiking, dog, dog blog, whippet, chihuahua, labrador, roger nisbet, chihuaha, terrier
“Don’t count on me. I’m not a reliable person politically.”
That’s a Bob Dylan quote that I used on my wife the other night when she was after me again to put an Obama sticker on the Vocho.
How do I know it’s a real Bob Dylan quote? Because I got it myself from Dick Flacks when I interviewed him for Real Gauchos.
Summarizing a conversation he had with Dylan during a break at an SDS meeting, Flacks said, “And he said, basically, ‘Don’t count on me. I’m not a reliable person politically.’”
(It still counts as a Bob Dylan quote, though, right?)
Bumper stickers have never been my thing, so my wife says I have to make some other contribution to the cause.
“Could you tell everyone to vote for Obama? That would be doing your part.”
Instead, I took our dog Barry (pictured here in his "Obama Dog" sweater) on a 10-mile run yesterday. He wasn’t barking for Obama the whole way, but he’s named after the president, his collar says “Barack’s Best Friend”, and on Cathedral Oaks on a sunny day that adds up to a lot of people getting the message.
I don’t know if that’s good enough for my wife, but I know this: if Obama doesn’t win, it’s not Barry’s fault. He’s run hundreds of miles for Obama this year, and when he gets home he drinks water out of his blue “I bark for Obama” bowl.
I wonder who Jonah Lehrer will vote for. Now that guy has a good Bob Dylan story. If only I’d thought to have him tell it on the radio.
Everyone with Internet access is badmouthing Jonah Lehrer these days, but I have nothing bad to say about the guy. He gave a lot of good free advice to the UCSB CLAS Writing tutors, including a couple real nuggets.
Several weeks before he melted down into a self-plagiarist, regular plagiarist, and outright fabricator, Jonah Lehrer told that lucky Writing Lab crowd, “I can’t begin to emphasize enough how important it was for me to basically just copy people I admired.”
Well I admire Bob Dylan, and that’s why I don’t do bumper stickers.
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Tags: bumper stickers, barry obama, bob dylan, plagiarism, obama dog, bark for obama, Jonah Lehrer
Our new dog’s name is Barry. My wife tells people it’s for Barack Obama, and dresses him in an Obama Dog sweater. I say it’s for Barrilete Cósmico, the nickname Maradona earned when he scored the best goal ever.
I speak to Barry in chilango and porteño accents, and although he understands both, he doesn’t listen in either - all his commands are in English but with my wife’s Scottish tone.
Barry is a multicultural mutt, but he’s no dummy. When we saw this sign posted at the Sheffield Reservoir, he looked at me as if to ask, ¿Qué chingaos es esto, boludo?
Pretty much every Spanish word on here is either wrong or not actually a word, and to list all the mistakes would be to make the County of Santa Barbara look incompetent. Some of the errors are so bad, they’re even funny to people who don’t speak Spanish.
Los Perros De Ben Estar A Marrados means, “Ben’s Dogs To Be [something that makes no sense]”. Deben and amarrados should be one word each, which would at least make sense but still be sloppy: “Dogs Must Be Tied Up”.
Mo Munopatins En el Parque means, “[Nonexistent words] in the park”. There is no such word as mo, and monopatines is Spanish Spanish for skateboards, which wouldn’t have been the best choice in California even if they had spelled it correctly. They should have said patineta, but even nothing would have been better, what with the illustration right beside it and all.
