Sweetney

I for one welcome our televisual overlords

Greetings to Good Morning America viewers who may have caught the segment this morning that involved my enormous head my dog Truman and those bastards nefarious Stealy McStealerpantes the Fox network. You can read all about that debacle (aka  Dog Photo Kerfuffle 2007) here and here if you'd like to hear the whole painful story in detail. You sick brave soul you.

Feel free to poke around these parts and kick the virtual tires and say howdy. To get a taste of what Sweetney is about -- above and beyond copyright-infringing pug-related matters -- have a looksee at a few of my favorite posts. Alternately, if you're all about Truman the pug, there's an archive full of posts about him, too (appropriately, and perhaps somewhat presciently, called "The Truman Show").

Welcome, and please to enjoy.

. . . . .
To those of you that missed my enormous head the segment: I'll post a link to the video here once it's live on the GMA site, which should be later this morning.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a TV-induced nervous breakdown I need to be attending to. GAH.

ETA: No video yet, but you can read the story here; video will be added there later, I believe.

What the world needs now is pug, sweet pug

I don't know about the rest of you, but between our current economic apocalypse and the intensity of this year's election politics, I'm freaking exhausted. Tapped, drained, spent, BURNT OUT.

Which is precisely why I decided it was time to pull out the big guns.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I bring you some much needed levity -- embodied in the form of the fluffy, fawn-colored lump of pure awesome we call Truman -- dressed up as a pig and a chicken.

The classic "why you do this?" look

Could it be.... BACON?

Freed from pig-headed terror, Truman now wrestles with the horrors of pig neck

He's trying to go to his happy place here, far far away from the pain

Mid chicken-head-dislodging shake

Yeah, he looks comfortable with all of this. Totally.

For trick-or-treating purposes, I'm partial to chicken myself, though M insists pig is the way to go. Mired as we are in this heavy season of debate, what say you regarding the all-important Pig Vs. Chicken issue, my fellow Americans?

Aside to Jonniker: OH IT'S ON.

My daughter the shark

dun-nuh duh-nuh duh-nuh duh-nuh duh-nuh-nuh!

Teeth grow in but they don't grow out, it seems. Yep, that's TWO sets of lower-front teeth you see in the photo there, Great White shark style. And though the baby teeth are indeed loose, M has seemed less-than-interested in the promised Tooth Fairy Booty, and so she hasn't been working to loosen them further (factoring in inflation and adjusting for our current recession, I'd suggested 50 cents per tooth -- double the 25 cents I received as a youngin' -- as an economically sound market rate, but perhaps I'm lowballing?) (I strongly suspect she's holding out for a minimum of 75 cents per tooth, or for some kind of toy or puppy-based pot-sweetening, smart girl). Soon we may have to have them pulled. I've threatened as much, to no avail. She's one stubborn, steely-eyed ocean predator.

She also has one infected upper front tooth. Because, apparently, God hates us. According to the dentist this feat can only be achieved by way of some kind of physical trauma like thwacking one's mouth with great force on a hard surface, yikes! When she said this, I tilted my head to the side Lassie-style, and uttered something gutteral that sounded like "Durrrr?" Because I have absolutely no idea how or when that happened. I mean, when the time for The Beatings comes we always stay away from the face and head -- what kind of monsters do you think we are? Anyway, there's another one likely to have to be yanked shortly.

I foresee much dental-based hysterics in our future. Curses. Drat. Dangnabbit.

Y'all have any suggestions on how to get those chompers out sooner, thus avoiding costly dentistry and permanent psychological trauma (more likely mine than hers)? So far I've vigorously cajoled and pleaded, a tactic that seems full of fail. I need to bring out bigger guns, but my parenting arsenal is bare (well, except for a cache of deadly Shame & Guilt Throwing Stars -- ill-suited to this battle, sadly). Le halp, oh great and powerful internet hive mind of parenting awesome?

Six, Six, Six.

Well that went fast.

On Sunday M turned six. Which, yeah, tore a little piece of my heart out, because I'm a ridiculous wuss about this whole growing up thing. As we've established.

I don't know what to say about it, really. My baby is vanishing, poof. It's hard, and I happen to suck at this particular brand of hard. I'm thinking about starting her on a regimen of coffee-drinking and chain-smoking, as I hear those things stunt kid's growth and keep em' nice and little. Hey! Calm down! I said I was THINKING about it. Jeez, people.

Anyway, I've of course been stewing over this a bit lately, as I am wont to do. Thinking perhaps a bit more than is healthy about how quickly it's all flying by. About how six whole years sped past me without blinking, and about how six more will doubtless be gone in an instant, like air sputtering from a punctured balloon. The punctured balloon OF MY LIFE. WHICH IS RAPIDLY DEFLATING. GODDAMMIT.

Like, then all of a sudden she'll be TWELVE -- almost a teenager. Then what'll I do? Why, I'll lay down with my Doan's Pills and my Reader's Digest and ask someone to get me a clean hankie and fluff my pillow, that's what I'll do. And I won't get up again until she graduates from High School, at which point I'll have Jamie wheel my sagging deflated balloon-like carcass over to the graduation ceremony, so I can weep and claw at my face melodramatically while emitting horrifying gaspy-wailing type sounds, my body shuttering and spasming with each vocalization. Like, imagine if Joan Collins were your Mom, and your life was Dynasty, and there was A Very Special High School Graduation episode. THAT'S what it'll be like.

So I'm sitting on the couch last night ready to keel over and die thinking about all this self-tormenting BS, when our evil cat Maxine -- a monstrous Calico who bullies all the other household pets relentlessly -- begins to taunt Truman, threatening to thwack him in the bulgy eyeballs with one of her razor-sharp, not-clipped-in-the-past-decade claws (oops, my bad). In an reflexive attempt to thwart pug eye-gouging-type disaster, I yelled: "MAXINE! LEAVE HIM ALONE OR I'LL BEAT YOU!" (as if the cat understands English -- God, I'm an asshole.)

A moment later, my now six year old daughter turns to me and asks, in all seriousness: "Mommy? What does 'beat you' mean?"

And it was then that I realized I still have so much little kid time left.

The "Garden & Gun" Nintendo Giveaway: You pick the winner, because I'm too much of a pussy

THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN: WE HAVE A WINNER!!!

With 18% of the vote (which doesn't sound like a lot, but keep in mind the vote was divided between 10 contenders, and some were very strong contenders), the winner is:

"Garden & Gun: Keeping the Pansies Off Your Lawn (Brought To You By The Religious Right)" from Wonderspot!

Congrats to her, and sincere thanks to everyone who participated. This was a lot of fun, and it definitely helped to lift my spirits!

. . . . .

So! You probably noticed that we had a crapload of submissions for the "Garden & Gun" giveaway (nearly 200, in fact! SHAZAM!), the vast majority of which I would characterize as FREAKING HILARIOUS. Sweetney readers, YOU COMPLETE ME. The submissions were so awesome in fact that I feel one woman (see: ME) shouldn't -- nay, COULDN'T -- be allowed to choose the winner  alone. So, yeah, I'm basically totally pussing out and asking you guys to make my decision for me. LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE, SAYS I. ALL HAIL DEMOCRACY AND SHIT! (Though of course The People are going to have to select from what *I* deem to be the Top 10 submissions -- let's not get all crazy with the democracy crap here.) (You are, after all, on a site whose tagline for years was "This is not a democracy, this is a ROCKTATORSHIP.") (I know -- you're all in awe of my flaming awesome, aren't you?)

Plus I have a sinus infection and would really really like to go lay down for a while. So.

Here's the rules, listen up:

1. Pick your favorite of the below listed submissions and vote for it;
2. I have hidden the submissions on the original post, so no one can match the submissions here to a submitter (unless you have a good memory, which I don't, so whatevs);
3. If yours is one of the submissions selected below, I would ask that you NOT go on some kind of vote-grubbing campaign. Let's all play fair and let the untainted will of The People be heard (AGAIN with The People! GAH);
4. Relatedly, I set this here poll up to allow you to vote only once. I don't doubt that there are ways you could get around that if you really wanted to, but again, let's play fair like big adult-type people, shall we?;
5. This poll will only be open for the next 24 hours, and will close promptly at 9AM ET tomorrow morning, with the winner announced shortly thereafter, so be quick like the bunnies!

Send any questions/concerns to me at sweetney @ sweetney.com, and I'll get back to you as soon as my head stops throbbing as though it were filled with 100% PURE HATING TRACEY SERUM.

Ready? GO!

Online Surveys & Market Research