The silliest dog article I've ever come across (and I'm a sucker for dog stories), has got to be this one by Jon Katz in Slate. In it his dog Orson has taken to biting people, and he repeatedly states that since he'd previously done loads of training with the dog, his only choices are: build a kennel with high walls, move to an even more isolated area away from people, take the dog for expensive medical tests to determine if there's an underlying biological cause for his behavior, or have it euthanized.
After long, long paragraphs of soul-searching, he ends with:
What pushed me through my lethargy was a passage Arendt cited from Immanuel Kant: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me."Orson and I had been under the starry heavens all summer and now, I had to listen to the moral law within me.
Weighty thoughts, indeed. Ever thought of buying a freaking muzzle?
Posted by floridacracker at September 26, 2006 10:40 PMPoint of trivia: Jon Katz is the guy who inspired the name "Juan Gato" when I used it.
He used to write incredibly silly essays for Slashdot saying things like, "For the first time in history, corporations are manipulating media to make you buy what you may not actually need." I paraphrase, of course, but it was his asininity that got me started, hence the name stealing.
Posted by: marc at September 26, 2006 11:00 PMGod, the guy starts with some stupid premise and then writes War and Peace on it. He's in there throwing in allusions to Abraham Lincoln, and all I'm thinking is 'Get a muzzle, asshole.' He spun a whole book out this drama. No wonder the dog's demented -- his owner's a drama queen.
And the dog is paying his freaking bills and he's contemplating killing it. Jerk.
Business and media have been hand in hand since the beginning. It's mutually profitable. How many science fiction stories did you read as a child that had that worked in there somewhere? Geez, this man is a dolt.
In grad school I used to read just the abstracts of articles, then spin out long papers on them. Maybe I can get a job like Jon Katz's.
Posted by: Donnah at September 26, 2006 11:10 PMThat was his basic style on Slashdot. He was the house philosopher there in a very 90s, prolonged adolesence, techno-socialist way until he became immediately obsolete after September 11th, 2001. To this day, along with Nick Gilespie and others from Suck.com, he is the epitome of 90s narcissistic attempts at clever philosophy.
He began with stating either the bleeding obvious or some completely unsuported nonsense as if it was a stunning insight, then blah-blah'd on and on. I used to complain about his nonsense so much that my friends told me to start writing online stuff to counter him -- hence the name.
Oh, and thanks for rubbing it in that you're smart enough for grad-school. As if my barely-literate self needed that!
Posted by: marc at September 27, 2006 12:02 AMHeh. Three grad schools, baby. I can write blah-blah-blah if I want, but what's the point?
Very enjoyable history of professional shit-writing on the Internet. Thanks.
You're far from barely literate and you know it. That's why you have to keep changing blogs, to escape the crush of fans.