MAKING PUDDLES

I am about to relate the odyssey of Puddles, a small dog caught in an emotional whirlwind. He was born in the late spring of 2007, a collection of fur, olfactory sensors, two bulging eyes, a stomach, a rectum and four paws. We know nothing about his canine parents, except that they were both Shih Tzus. But we do know that his first human “owner” was Sylvia Trevino, who lived near the south central Texas community of Alice, which is home to the world's largets concrete water tower, and occupied by about 19,000 “buena gente” (good humans) and probably half that many good dogs. Just after he was “weaned” Puddles was torn from the bosom of his litter by his human “owner” and sold to Sylvia’s 37 year old niece, Shelly Cavazos, her human mate, Rudy Gutierrez, and their four human children, Joseph, Olivia, Brian and the youngest, Jon. By July Puddles had settled into his new home, had discovered some cool fresh dirt to roll around in and had even invented a new game to play with his humans. Unfortunately by the time he had tired of “get the dog out from under the house” Puddles was heavily infected with fleas. This led to another discovery; that Puddles suffers from an allergy to fleas.
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But the Gutierrez-Cavazos family had scheduled a visit the next day to a local human amusement park and, since coordinating human schedules is never easy, they were reluctant to change their plans. Luckily they knew another human, a neighbor, Ms. Grace Saenz-Lopez, who had a reputation for caring for lost and sick animals, and who was also the Mayor of Alice. They felt comfortable leaving Puddles in her care and she was willing to watch over him. And so, yet again, Puddles was forced to adjust to new surroundings and an unfamiliar human. But this situation promised to be only for a day; not that Puddles understood any of this, because he was ill and he is, after all, a dog, which is something to keep in mind as Puddles’ curious odyssey gets more complicated. The next day, as the Gutierrez-Cavazos family was enjoying their holiday they received a phone call from Ms. Saenz-Lopez, with bad news. Puddles had died and had been buried in Ms. Saenz-Lopez’s back yard. Ms. Cavazos did not tell the children until the drive home, when they all cried. “Everyone”, she says, “was very upset.” So upset that the children made it clear, she says, they did not want a “new” dog.
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And that is where things stood until Halloween, when Sylvia Trevino, Puddles’ original owner, stopped by “Linda’s Grooming and Rooming”, on County Road 137, south of town, looking for a new mate for her female Shih Tzu. And while there she spotted a handsome young, viral looking male Shih Tzu who also looked vaguely familiar. Linda Brandt, the owner of “Linda’s”, told Sylvia that the dog’s name was Panchito, and his owner was the Mayor of Alice, Grace Saenz-Lopez. And that was when Sylvia realized. That was no Panchito. That was Puddles!
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Linda Brandt was caught between two customers. She felt that the Mayor had probably done something wrong but “She does a lot of good.” So Linda returned Puddles to the Mayor. Shelly and Rudy, Puddle’s bereaved owners, called the Mayor to ask for an explanation. But the Mayor never returned their calls. What were Shelly and Rudy to do? Their children had loved Puddles. And a pure bred male Shih Tzu can cost a human $800 dollars or more. They filed a police report but the Alice Police Department was of the opinion that it was a civil matter.
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In December the family and supporters stood outside of city hall carrying signs that compared the mayor to “Cruella De Vil”, but when they twice attempted to bring up the matter at City Council Meetings they were ushered out of the room. Still the story made the front page of the Alice Echo News-Journal, the local paper, and longtime opponents of the Mayor came out of the woodwork. One man tried to force $1,000 on Rudy to pay for a lawyer. Rudy didn’t take it, but the offer got him thinking. And in the New Year he filed a civil suit in the 79th District Court, alleging intentional fraud with malice and infliction of emotional distress. The suit asked for the immediate and safe return of Puddles, legal fees, court costs and unspecified damages, because, “Not only is it blatantly illegal for the defendant, Grace Saenz-Lopez, to keep Puddles, it is inhumane to withhold the puppy from his rightful owners – honest, warm-hearted people who spent their hard earned money to buy Puddles, and who have repeatedly pleaded with defendant…to return the puppy to their loving home and into the eager arms of their young children.”
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The Mayor did not respond publicly to the lawsuit. But at about 11:30 AM on Sunday, January 13, Alice P.D. officer Cyrildo Garcia Jr. and his supervisor responded to a call from her home in the 700 block of Alto Street. There Ms. Saenz-Lopez told them that Panchito/Puddles” had escaped out a door propped open for her cats. (First PPD - Psychological Plot Point!) She said she had searched the neighborhood but could find no trace of the missing Shih Tzu. She suggested that the Gutierrez family might have stolen the puppy.
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After Rudy invited the police to search his home the officers were also invited to search the mayor’s home. No Shih Tzu was found in either location so the officers returned to their more standard duties, arresting violent criminals and drug users. But the events in Alice had piqued the investigative instincts of a recent transplant from the Boston media market, Gabe Gaggiano, who had been following the stolen puppy story from KZTV "Action News", Channel 10, in Corpus Christi, Texas. And on Monday Gabe got a tip from Sylvia Trevino (remember her) that Puddles was now residing at the home of Gracie Garcia, who was the Mayor’s twin sister. (Second PPD)
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Gabe and Travis Cobb, a Cameraman at the cable station, took the hour long drive out to Alice, and then the 15 minute drive south to tiny Ben Bolton, where Gracie Garcia owned a home. There they found several dogs in the front yard and on an enclosed back porch a small cute little feather duster on four feet, which they briefly video tapped. Viewing that tape, Sylvia confirmed that the missing Puddles had been found! When Gabe showed this evidence to Alice Police Chief Danny Bueno and asked if he was now going to arrest the Mayor, the Chief responded, “I’d like to keep my job.” But Puddles was no longer a mere missing dog. Now he was missing evidence, and the destruction or concealment of evidence is a felony, as Scooter Libby could have explained if he had ever actually been punished.
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Shortly thereafter the intrepid journalists Gabe and Travis had spotted Gracie Garcia’s car in the Mayor’s driveway, and Gabe video taped his final contribution to our puppies’ tail. Breathlessly he told viewers; “We’re at the Mayor’s house now. The Mayor is not answering the door. The shades are down. We just hope this isn’t another Waco.” That tragedy was unlikely to be repeated since Jim Wells County, of which Alice is the County seat, was the only Texas County with the good sense to favor John Kerry in 2004. People that sensible are unlikely to commit suicide. Although… (http://www.kztv10.com/wiki/KZTV/Puddles)
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Upon the advice of her lawyer, the Mayor delivered Puddles to his office (wrapped in a leapord print blanket), and that allowed the press to interview her one more time as she went into the building. She declared that she had taken Puddles to the Vet, that he had been mistreated, and that she had taken him to save his life. She also insisted that she had not lied to the police about the disappearing Puddles. A mystery woman driving a red car (Third PPD) found Puddles wandering in the neighborhood and, since the Mayor was not home, had taken him to the sister’s home… 15 miles away. But, insisted the Mayor, “All I give a damn about is the damn dog. He’s not going back into that hell hole.” (Fourth PPD)
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The twins are now out on $2,500 bail apiece and face from one to seven years in jail. The city attorney has filed a complaint against the Mayor’s attorney, claiming he was threatened. The City Council has voted “no confidence” in the mayor and asked her to please resign. Organizers have started collecting the 150 signatures required to force a recall election. And the attorney for the Gutierrez-Cavazos family insists that the family just wants Puddles back home.
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On February 4th, a human judge will decide which humans get to take Puddles home, the politician willing to sacrifice her career and reputation to “protect” him, or the family who just wanted him as a pet for their four children. And what does Puddles want? Not that it matters but his ideal home would probably be a warm dry cave occupied by a dozen other dogs, surrounded by a field of limping rodents, flightless birds and stupid cats to eat, covered in some delicious filth to roll around in and cool water to drink, and with an occasional bitch to hump. That is an ideal dog’s life. And as stark and cruel as it might at first appear, under closer examination, is it really that different from the one all these humans are seeking?

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Huckabee? Suck-a-bee!

I find myself wondering, again, what the hell the pundits are confidently "punditting" about. Senator John McCain won South Carolina by just 3% over Mike Yuckabee. That ain’t much, buddy. And amongst the lunatic fringe The Yuck got 40% of the vote. This year, with people reminded just what damage an idiot in the White House can do, that may not matter. But the body politic suffers from short term memory loss, and in an average election year the lunatic fringe still controls the Republican Party. And Mike the Yuck is their boy. This is not a matter of respecting religious freedom, it is a question of denying reality.
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This arrogant, ignorant self righteous, self proclaimed man of God is a liar, a fraud and pretender. In other words, the Yuck is a typical politician. And it is The Yuck who has placed his religion on the table, using it as weapon in his political arsenal. Well, if he gets to use it, then so do I. I do not demean his faith. He demeans it. I am just pointing out how. As Yuck said himself, “Politics are totally directed by worldview. That's why when people say, 'We ought to separate politics from religion,' I say to separate the two is absolutely impossible" However, I guess, Yuck’s worldview can separate religion from ethics. The Yuck made Judicial Watch’s 10 Most Corrupt Politicians in America list. And one of The Yuck’s longest and best buds is political advisor Dick Morris (of toe sucking fame). TheYuck has been smart enough to keep his Dick zippered up; they are never seen together in public. But Dick has sung The Yuck’s praises in “The Hill” and on “Faux News”, and even The Yuck admits they share long and intimate late night telephone conversations. The Yuck described Morris, in a 1995 interview, as, “…a surgeon who can perform surgery on a 75 year old man in one room and a 21 year old woman in the next room. As long as he doesn’t get the patients confused there’s no problem.” Interesting choice of patients for The Yuck’s analogy, wouldn’t you say?
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Pulling aside the curtain a little further we find an even odder combination, the pairing, of ‘Tax Hike Mike’ with Newt “Big Baby Tax Cut” Gingrich. Yuck says, “The Bible was not written to be amended. The Constitution was”, indicating his intention of making the legal definition of “love” as existing only between one man and one woman, which would mean, I would have supposed, that two of Newt’s wives and all of his mistresses were not only immoral but unconstitutional as well. But leave it to a politician-minister to justify his own sins while condemning everybody else’s.
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Yuck adheres to the theology of “biblical inerrancy”, the belief that not only is every word in the bible the perfect word of a perfect God and thus without error, but so was the decision to exclude the books of 1st and 2nd Maccabees, which are included in the Catholic bible. So Catholics are not part of Yuck’s perfect world. But does Yuck adhere to the Chicago Statement, or is he a King James Only, or a Textus Receptus believer? The profusion and confusion of Christian sects gets mighty convoluted when you start turning multi-translations of biblical texts into legal and constitutional minutia. But one thing should be unambiguous. Either The Yuck has a Bachelor’s degree in Divinity, as he has claimed, or he does not, as he now admits; but in either case he is a liar. And I have heard that God doesn’t like liars. Now, where did I hear that?
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This idiot compared his diet hunger pangs to starving to death in Dachau. He compared homosexuality to sex with animals, and he has repeatedly compared the mass murder of 6 million Jews to legal abortion. And of course, he hinted (wink, wink) that Mormons are devil worshipers. Yuck did not cut taxes in Arkansas, overall he raised them by $500 million. They were spent on desperately needed highway improvements, but the issue is not ‘did he do the right thing’, the issue is that he lied about it. In 2005 he called an Arkansas Senate bill that would have denied state benefits to illegal immigrants as “un-Christian and un-American, irresponsible and anti-life” It’s statements like that which might have made him a true “compassionate conservative”, but, of course, while pandering to the right wing nutcases in Iowa, Yuck denounced much of his earlier position. That’s the politician in him drowning out the minister at just the wrong moment.
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But it is The Yuck’s stand on Darwin that defines him as a member of the lunatic fringe, for me. The Theory of Evolution is not a theory as The Yuck uses the term; a supposition, an idea, a proposal to be debated. Gravity is a similar theory, but it is still suggested that you not jump off any buildings. Combustion is a Theory about some types of chemical interactions, but it is still suggested that you do not stick phosphorous in your mouth. In scientific terminology a Theory is an idea supported by evidence but which may not predict an outcome. A law, such as Newton’s Laws of Motion, allows mathematical predictability, and allows you to design rockets and airplanes and dams and electrical power plants. Evolution can also make predictions but never with mathematical certainty. And I suspect The Yuck knows the difference between a scientific law and a scientific theory. But the politician in him also knows that the average voter does not. And his lack of personal integrity allows him to take advantage of that.
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And that is why I detest this liar, this popinjay, this cheat and this fraud, Mike Huckabee.

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BRITNEY & BJORK: CRAZY AS A CAREER CHOICE

I confess that the pixie lunatic from Iceland has once again caught me by surprise. Bjork from Ork, the pop star elf, the Reykjavik space cadet, the musical sex kitten, touched down in Auckland recently for a concert and, like the wrathful Goddess Freya from Norse mythology, tore into a photographer from the New Zealand Herald, ripped his shirt off his back and ended up on the linoleum on her cute little lunatic ass. The last time Bjork went off like this was when a reporter had the temerity to say to her, “Welcome to Bangkok”. But this time there was no such taunting. Bjork just lost it, as if she hadn’t liked the movie or her chicken Kiev had been overdone and she had been saving up all that anger until she got back on the ground where she could earn a little press.
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You couldn’t make this stuff up unless you’ve been stranded out to sea in an open boat for a week with ten gallons of mead and some peyote. That must be how the Vikings discovered America. And speaking of America, have you noticed that for every sixty headlines that Britney Spears produces, Bjork manages to scare up at least one new one? She’s like the European version of American health care; far less expensive and yet she has all the same problems.
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According to Norse Myth, Freya, the Goddess of sex, fertility, war and wealth, wore a feather dress and flew into battle in a golden war wagon drawn by pussy cats. And if that doesn’t describe little Bjork Guomundsottir I don’t know my Nordic myths. And Freya occasionally teamed up with Frigg, the North German Goddess of marriage and motherhood and also fertility and love, who sounds a little bit like the fecund felonious Britney, for purposes of this discussion. And when Frigg wept, she wept tears of gold, and that description fits our little Miss Brit perfectly.
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Britney is our unstable national treasure, worth, according to portfolio.com, about $120 million a year to our ailing economy, plus $400 million in music sales over the last ten years, $150 million in concert tour ticket sales and $100 million in perfume sales. A cover photo of Britney with or without hair on her head increases magazine sales by about 1.3 million copies, and she accounts for 1/3 of all magazine covers, making her worth another $350 million a year to the publishing industry. It seems the only thing keeping America out of an economic depression might be Britney’s mental depression. Stabilizing her psychosis should be the top priority for both the Federal Reserve Bank and the bank of KFed. Just, please, Odin, don’t make her well. We can’t afford that.
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Bjork just seems a better educated and slightly saner version of Brit. She’s still crazy, of course, but we’re talking comparatively, here. Compare their thoughts on wealth; Bjork said dismissively, “If nothing else, I have money.” Brittney boasted “I’m rich, freakin’ rich.” And on fame, Bjork observed, “People come to you and you know exactly what they’re after; if they want to give you something or take something away or are simply curious. It’s often a good reason…”, while Britney observed, “I’m famous, but I’m not famous like freaking Brad Pitt or Jennifer Aniston.” Britney later elaborated on the freaking perks of her freaking lifestyle, “The cool thing about being famous is traveling. I have always wanted to travel across seas, like to Canada and stuff.” And Bjork observed that there are some things that freaking money and freaking fame can’t freaking buy you, when she said, “There’s no such freedom in the world that you can pick anything you want and put it in your butt”.
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It’s almost like freaking poetry, isn’t it? The limitations and responsibilities of freedom have not been phrased so lyrically and succinctly since Thomas Jefferson put down his quill and started making viral videos. Either one of these women are quite capable of being the perpetrator of a killing spree. The only difference between them is that I expect Britney will start shooting in a night club because she doesn’t like the way people are looking at her, while Bjork will likely just walk down Hollywood Boulevard executing everyone she thinks is dressed too negatively.
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You doubt that could happen? Just remember that old Norse limerick, The Lay of Thrym, that begins, “Wrathful was Freyja and fiercely she snorted…” Clearly the lady wasn’t cooperating so the other gods put a dress on Thor and “…a pretty cap to crown his head”, and in her place sold Thor in marriage to a giant. Thor escaped from this dire predicament by butchering the giant’s sister, and everybody had a good laugh; everybody except the giant, of course, and his sister. And then there was the joke they played on the god Lukey, who was forced to change himself into a horse and was mounted by a stallion and then gave birth to a,…well, I don’t want to spoil the joke. But you can understand now why Bjork is the way she is.
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But why is Britney as crazy as a loon? If you know anything about Britney’s mother you wouldn’t even bother asking that. And, by the way, Britney’s doppelganger, the goddess Frigg, is also credited with giving us the name of the last day of the work week, Figgday, or Friday. And I guess Britney's favorite day would be Friggday the 13th.

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Right, Bjork?

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2008: 1948 REDUX

I don’t want to go "Bjork" on anybody but I am really bored with political pundits, and not just because Chris Mathews is an idiot, Bill “the Big Giant Head” O’Reilly is an immoral waste of calcium, George Will is an agent prevaricator, George Snot-nose-lopside-ious is an amoral pipsqueak and Joe “Scarface” Scarborough is yet another idiot. No, all these “el pollo loco” political prognosticators don’t get paid to be right but to fill time so the toilet paper and mouth wash ads that pay their salaries don’t collide in the airspace inside their heads. I contend that the only life form lower than a politician must be a political pundit. Thomas Dewey died for their sins way back in 1948, and yet they are still sinning.
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Thomas Dewey, described by H.L. Menkin as “The only man I know who could strut standing down”, and by a political opponent as "...a guy who works hard, so he can quit early and go home to reorganize his files". was reelected Governor of New York in 1946 by an historic margin despite having his head handed to him two years earlier in the 1944 Presidential election. Ane Dewey still represented the liberal eastern wing of the GOP, while the conservative Midwest wing was embodied by Ohio Senator Robert Taft, who now ran congress after the Republicans carried both houses in the 1946 midterm elections. When Dewey beat Taft in the Oregon primary the victory ensured him the inside track for the Republican nomination, and the eternal emnity of Senator Taft.
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On the plus side for Dewey, Harry Truman was one of the most unpopular presidents in modern American history, primarily because he just wasn’t Roosevelt. The best joke of 1948 was, “To err is Truman.” The Democrats desperately wanted to nominate anybody else. It took them until 2:30 AM on nomination night to admit that nobody else even wanted the job. But Harry then surprised the convention by making his acceptance speech at once despite the late hour. Taking the microphone at close to 3:00AM a fiesty Harry promised he would win this election and “…make these Republicans like it.” Then he announced, “On the twenty-sixth day of July, which out in Missouri we call “Turnip Day,” I am going to call Congress back and ask them to pass laws …which they are saying they are for in their platform.…”
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Nobody in Missouri had ever heard of Turnip Day but seed companies found their orders for Turnip seeds suddenly quadrupled. It was the first sign that strange things were about to happen. The second sign was that when Harry called the congress back, Senator Taft saw no reason to betray his ultraconservative causes just to negate Truman’s attack on a “do nothing” congress. So Taft blocked any votes on enlarging Social Security, civil rights legislation, and the minimum wage, programs that the liberal Republican Dewey (and most voters) supported.
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As Hillary's advisors would do again in Iowa, Dewey’s advisors decided that he should remain above the fray and refuse to even mention Truman by name. But that tended to reduce his speeches to such banality that, as the Louisville Courier-Journal pointed out, they consisted of little more than four sentences;“Agriculture is important. Our rivers are full of fish. You cannot have freedom without liberty. Our future lies ahead.” The advisor's controls were so tight that Dewey’s running mate, Earl Warren, moaned, “I wish that just once I could call somebody an S.O.B.!” At this same time Truman was describing Dewey by name as “…a kind of doctor…” who answered all questions by saying, “I never discuss issues with a patient”
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Every poll predicted that Dewey would win by a landslide. The New York Times declared, “Thomas E. Dewey’s Election as President is a Foregone Conclusion.” Bookies were taking 20 to 1 odds against Truman. Elmo Roper, who started the Roper Poll, decided to stop polling after late September, asking, "What's the point?" One columnist asked, “How long is Dewey going to tolerate Truman’s interference in government?” Even Democrats were certain they were beaten. Gallup stayed on the job but their last poll before Election Day showed Dewey with 49.5% lead, while Truman showed at only 44%, a tightening but still not really close. Eager to beat the competition The Chicago Tribune headline for the day after Election Day read, “Dewey Defeats Truman”. And yet …the actual vote totals were almost exactly the reverse of that last poll; 49% for Truman and 45% for Dewey. (Which mirrored the 8:07PM FauxNews report on election night in New Hampshire of 2008 that showed Obama would win with 39% to Hillary’s 34%.)
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Dewey later admitted that waking up the morning after election day he felt like the guy who woke up in a coffin with a Lilly in his hands, and wondered, “If I am alive, what am I doing here? And if I’m dead, why do I have to go to the bathroom?” It makes you wonder where that Thomas Dewey had been hiding during the campaign. The answer was that his consultants had controlled him just as they controlled Hillary 60 years later in Iowa. And it worked about as well.
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And today’s jerks and egomaniacal pundits have only to refer to the Social Science Research Council’s 400 page study of the 1948 election to find their own fault. The council warned that pollsters in 1948 “…attempted the spectacular feat of predicting the winner without qualifications”. In retrospect Mr. Roper called his own and his colleges’ performance “honest but dumb”. And 60 years of experience has only allowed us to drop the limiting definition for a pundit of “honest”. Yes, Bill, that means you.

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FALLING INTO CRAP; AN ALLEGORY.

I would call it an allegorically rich environment, On Christmas eve Robert Schoff of Des Moines, Iowa, decided to unblock his septic tank by hand. Why, you may ask, and I would answer; possibly because he’s a 77 year old fart who has always been too cheap to call a plumber, or possibly because he’s a 5’ 5” tall control freak with a Napoleon complex, or maybe he’s on a fixed budget and was trying to save a couple of hundred bucks. But really, how expensive would it have been to tell his wife where he was going and to have her standing by in case he needed help? Because, he did need help; because when he reached into the septic tank the little old fart fell into the opening and got stuck with his feet flailing about in the air, while his head was suspended just inches above all that crap. And there he remained suspended for an hour, yelling and screaming for help. But nobody could hear him because he was upside down in a big concrete container buried in the earth, sort of like a great big burial vault or a crap filled tomb. And there he remained until his wife, Toni, noticed his flailing legs and called 9-1-1 and eventually two Sheriff’s Deputies arrived to pull Robert back to earth. Merry Christmas, Robert!
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And then there was the drunken idiot who stepped into his allegory. On a recent Monday evening Bill McDonald of Durham, North Carolina, was awakened by his daughter, who reported, “Dad, there are headlights right outside my bedroom window.” When he checked Bill found a section of his fence flattened, several bushes destroyed and a damaged car stuck in his yard. The driver was nowhere to be seen, but Bill was grateful that none of his dogs had been outside at the time of the crash. Bill called the cops and Sergeant Dale Gunter responded. He was recording details for the accident report when his flashlight revealed that the driver, upon exiting the automobile, had planted both feet in a big steaming pile of dog poop.
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Luckily the McDonalds own Snowball, a chow, and Comet, a Great Pyrenees, because if they had owned daschunds the driver likely would have escaped. As it was Sgt. Gunter was able to follow the trail of poop encrusted foot prints down Channing Court until a white van loomed out of the darkness. Sgt. Gunter waved it down and asked the passenger to step out. His shoes were encrusted with “evidence”. And later, at the station, the man, 18 year old Josue Herrios-Coronilla, blew an alcohol level of 0.11, well above the legal limit of 0.08. Josue had really stepped in it this time.
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Last October Christopher Kelly, 31, of Lancaster, England, spent a night celebrating a friend’s birthday by mixing vodka and beer. Somehow (Christopher cannot recall how) he ended up alone, on the beach of the river Lune. There he evidently decided to take a dip, because a bit later Christopher found himself dry but without shoes, jacket or pants. He then weaved his way to the town hall, where he found an open window and crawled in. He searched several offices before uncovering a cell phone, with which he tried to call his dearly departed friends. But he was unable to manipulate the tiny buttons. Nor was he able to find a rest room in the ancient building and “soiled” him self. So he removed his underwear and stuffed them into a trash bag.
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At this point Christopher was drunk and naked inside the Lancaster City Hall and carrying his soiled underwear in a plastic trash bag. Opportunely, Christopher uncovered a Halloween costume in one of the offices and, like Adam and Ever, used it to cover his nakedness. And that is how he left the Lancaster City Hall, dressed as the Grim Reaper, carrying a bag of stained underwear. As he wandered the streets of Lancaster, trying to remember where he lived, Christopher stumbled upon a closed police substation. And there he docilely waited for three hours until officers arrived to open the station and take him into custody. He was charged with burglary, having taken the cell phone and a camera from the offices in city hall, and given a six month suspended sentence. And that is how you fall into a pile of your own allegory and come out not smelling too badly at all.
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Or maybe you are just so damn cute that you actually find people eager to help you escape your allegory. Such was the fate of three year old Charley Thomas, of Cullopton, Devon, England, when on a kite flying expedition he spotted what seemed like the perfect Harry Potter Wizard’s hat, and pulled it firmly down on his head. Unfortunately it was not a Wizards Cap, nor a Choosing Cap, but a traffic cone, which was now jammed firmly on Charley’s head and refused to come off. His mother explained, “We tried to pull it off, tried laying him down and wiggling him free but that didn't work. We tried soapy water but that didn't do the trick so we had to call the fire brigade to cut it." Yes, after trying and failing for half an hour his parents finally called the fire department. And, as we all know, firemen can fix anything. Forty-five minutes later six firemen arrived and, a half hour after that, after pouring water down the open top of the cone for lubrication, managed to cut and pry the plastic cone off the little kid’s unbearably cute head. His mother explained, "We shouldn't have laughed but we had a chuckle - he looked so comical even though he was a bit upset." In fact, his parents even allowed photo’s of Charley’s traumatic hat-tas-trophy published in several London tabloids so that the entire nation could laugh at their unbelievably cute son.
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And in the year 2027, when Charley tip toes into his parent’s bedroom and murders them while they sleep, those photos will make powerful evidence of parental abuse at his trial. The traffic cone, you see, will be a perfect allegory for his cone headed parents.

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