It's My Dog's World: I Just Live In It

South Park vs. Cesar Millan: You be the judge

The New York Times has a little article about how parents are using Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan's techniques to deal with their kids.  I don't have the time to go into why, um, this might not be the best idea in the world, but I welcome comments.  (I love Cesar for his pitbull advocacy, but will point out that more that research has not supported some of his more controversial methods.  At all.)   I will point out that Karen Pryor, clicker trainer whiz, might be a better source of cross-species training.  Check out her classic "Don't Shoot the Dog."

And finally, I believe South Park beat the New York Times on this subject...by about three years.

Is The Death Penalty Too Good For Loud Talkers in Outdoor Cafes on a Saturday Morning? Discuss.

Well, it's been an extremely challenging week. But I managed not to kill anyone, and that is pretty darned good.

Not even the guy at the outdoor cafe who was TALKING SO LOUD he was ruining five tables' worth of conversations. 

At 10:30 on a Saturday morning. 

I live in Hoboken, which some magazine or other recently declared superfantastic for single people, or at least single heterosexual people who like to pick each other up in bars, of which we have mucho.  Bars and young straighties, that is. I'm not unrealistic.  I expect loud-talkers on a late night weekend bender, which is just one of the reasons I don't go to bars.  Booze totally ruins your volume control, while it improves your belief that that guy or girl is sexxxxay.

But this guy? He was an upstanding daddy, who was talking so LOUD about a PARTY (he kept flashing the invites) that Jeff and I had to start miming what we wanted to say to each other, and the waitress kept forgetting things, and other eaters at other tables just cringed.  I know you think we all should have moved, but there was no room in the next section, and you know, it was a nice day...we were eating outside because it was pleasant.  And surely the guy would eventually shut up. Hope springs eternal.  But sometimes hope is dumb.

Then when Loud Talker and his party got up to go, they spotted a couple they knew...so the eight of them stood at the entrance of the section, talking LOUD and ...blocking any person's ability to get in or out.  Especially our waitress.   Then  their little girl started petting the dogs at another table.  The dogs took their paws away from their ears...no, now I'm just exaggerating.

But I don't think I'm imagining what I heard when the new couple, who accepted an invitation from Loud Talking Man, sat down.

The woman pointed to the invitation and said, "Well, this way, we'll be able to see them, but we won't have to talk to them."