Personals

There's a dog barking just outside my window right now. It's been chained there and left by the kids looking after it while they go to a nearby pool for a few hours.
I never had a dog growing up, so it hasn't really dawned on me until now just what a horrendously fucked up relationship the kids and pets dynamic is: the most needy thing on earth looked after by the most self-absorbed thing on earth. It's sort of like one of my past girlfriends became a sponsor for the other of my past girlfriends.

I was an only child with no pet most of the time, so I'd just anthropomorphize stuff for company, you know, like Tom Hanks did with Wilson the volleyball in Cast Away. It still feels like a personal betrayal when stuff fails me. I still apologize like Bobby Brown when I lose it and punch the Whitney Huston that is my computer.
"Daddy's sorry, baby, really. Now boot up for me one last time. It can be good again, I know it. BOOT, YOU CHRISTING WHORE. No, I didn't mean it baby, really."

It's probably not surprising that when I finally did get a pet, a bird, it committed suicide from neglect. You get used to one-way relationships, something that has needs becomes tiresome real fast. "I pet you for a full 15 minutes last week! Be your own bird, for fuck's sake!"
I mean, I can't prove it was suicide, but you find an animal face down and drowned in the only 1/2 inch of water available to it, the conclusions to be drawn are few.

The dog outside is still barking.
"Drugs! Drugs! Drugs! Drugs! Drugs! Drugs! Drugs!" my one former girlfriend is outside begging to us all.
"Shutaap! I'll get you drugs later!" the other shows up to snap occasionally, and dashes back off to fuck everyone who isn't me.

The analogy breaks down there somewhere, but it fits in tone.