my vet says i'm awesome

in response to the overwhelming inquiries about my health (ok, it was just glenn but i'm sure the rest of you were just too worried to ask), i am not only in AWESOME health, the vet said i am one of the most healthy former homeless bum dogs he's ever seen. also, he thinks i look like a pirate. and that i'm unbearably cute because my face looks like a naked ape. no comment.

he also thinks i'm only 4-6 years old. previous estimates put me at 8-10 years old. see, my teeth are a bit, well, missing in spots so previous vets thought i was older. it turns out i just have good british teeth! the bad news is i have no excuse for acting like a dirty old man anymore. since i do not have a naked ape obsession with time (i do not possess the kantian categories of understanding, i have direct access to sense knowledge!), i have not been keeping track of my age. i do like your naked ape rituals of birthdays, though for some reason we don't get to celebrate them very often. why not every weekend? i am one week older. let's celebrate another week of wally!

i met a nice bassett hound at the vet named floyd. short legged dogs rule. what do you need all that leg for anyway? i should invite him to my birthday this weekend...every weekend. i accept gifts year round, by the way.

oh crap.

FrankenWally
Originally uploaded by cerasmus.

time for another visit to the vet. while he's not a bad guy, you can see what happened to me last time i went; he took a big chunk out of my side. and one time i went to the vet and, well, let's just say i came out a bit less of a man.

i do love the vet techs, though. they think i'm HOT even with a big bald patch. they give me snacks, especially when i wail and wail when my mawma leaves. such suckers.

cows, not just dinner

scientists in my home country of wales (what? i'm part corgi. i say i'm nebraskan just because i root for their football team. i can be welsh) have discovered personality in cows! they sound not unlike some naked apes i know (i won't name any names so as not to bite the hand that feeds me):

COWS are moody pleasure-seekers that bear grudges, nurture friendships and enjoy sex and sunbathing, scientists have found.

why do they call it PERSONality?

so i was doing my usual morning reading of the new york times to find out what you naked apes are messing up today and i came across this story which is about scientists studying animal personalities. it seems like whenever you get bored of studying each other, you study animals, but only to find out more about each other.

not surprisingly, you are studying birds since dogs would be far too personality packed and would make you realize how boring you really are. here's a sneak peak:

It may come as a surprise that their subjects have feathers. The scientists, based at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, are investigating personalities of wild birds.

Until recently, most experts in personality would have considered such a study as nothing but foolish anthropomorphism. "It's been looked at with suspicion and contempt," said Dr. Samuel Gosling, a psychologist at the University of Texas.

But scientists have found that in many species, individual animals behave in consistently different ways. They argue that these differences meet the scientific definition of personality.
If they are right, then human personality has deep evolutionary roots. "It's a matter of degree, not of differences," said Dr. Piet Drent of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology.

seems to me the anthropomorphism is a tricky problem. if you assume that only naked apes have personality (your language says so much about you), then it seems like you are imposing your understanding onto us non-human animals in assuming we are completely different. on the other hand, imposing human categories of personality onto us you're assimilating us into your world. gosh, you may have an intractable problem there, naked apes.

evolution shmevolution

I came across this story in an online aussie magazine:

Man to test cockroach-eating record
From correspondents in DelhiFebruary 28, 2005

INDIAN man Ramesh Kumar is planning an assault on the record books by eating 50 cockroaches in a minute.Mr Kumar, 26, said roaches and other insects had been part of his diet fromchildhood."One day I tried a cockroach and I liked it very much," he said.The current roach-consumption record of 36 in a minute would be a snack, he forecast.

I think this challenges your supposed superior intelligence given that 1) while i eat disgusting things because i like them (including but not limited to: cat poop, goose poop, whatever specks i find on the ground, things i find in the garbage), you naked apes do it for sport in spite of being grossed out 2) i, and most dogs i know, could whip your naked ape butts at competitive eating.