NO NEED TO CHECK THE CALENDAR: DOG DAYS ARE HERE

There is no need to check the calendar. These are definitely the Dog Days of summer. Webster’s Dictionary defines Dog Days as, “The period between early July and early September when the hot sultry weather of summer usually occurs in the northern hemisphere; a period of stagnation.”

The C. Richard Yarbrough Book of Bromides, Beatitudes and Barroom Banter defines Dog Days as, “When everybody gets a little nuttier than usual, which in the case of our Ambassador to Outer Space Cynthia McKinney is pretty hard to do.

Look no further than Sheila, the Family Wonder Dog, who recently awoke from one of her frequent twenty-two-hour naps and decided to eat all the contents in the grease bucket under the barbecue grill. Her first belch scorched an acre of nearby pine trees, and her first commune with nature precipitated an investigation by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division as to the possibility of a major toxic waste site.

But in fairness to Sheila, dogs aren’t the only ones acting a little nutty during Dog Days. We humans are doing a pretty fair job ourselves. Here is some Dog Days news from around the state to ponder as you simmer and stagnate:

R.J. Kurey, a member of the Alpharetta City Council, is facing removal from office over allegations that he has harassed city officials and constituents. Kurey has said he will resign  —  if the city pays him $100,000 and drops all charges. I think I detect a new political trend here. Get the public so tired of you that they will pay you to leave. (An aside to my self-important liberal friends: I will quit tweaking you and your patronizing buddies for a price. Take Ted Kennedy’s waist line, multiple by a million and I am all yours. No credit cards, please.)

At the other end of the state, Tony Thomas, a Savannah alderman, got a little tipsy recently and announced loudly to a policeman on the street that he was going to fire the police chief  —  an authority the alderman doesn’t have. News reports say Thomas was so intoxicated that officers had to drive him home. His attorney was quoted as saying, “I don't think he has any comment about what he meant and if he said it." Now, that is a fine piece of lawyer gobbledygook. I wonder if the attorney has any idea what he meant and if he said it.

In Dysfunction Junction, better known as Atlanta, image makers have created a new marketing slogan for the city, but they aren’t going to share it anytime soon because they have locked their gem away in a vault  —  like we really care. Perhaps the spin doctors are concerned that if Baghdad gets wind of the slogan, they might adopt it as their own. If it works for one lawless city, it is bound to work for another.

A Catholic priest from Augusta, Rev. Bob Cushing, is going to Japan in a few days to apologize to the Japanese for our dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Before the Reverend takes a bite out of his humble pie, I hope he remembers that we repeatedly warned the Japanese that if they didn’t surrender immediately, we would drop the bomb. They thought we were bluffing. Big mistake. While Rev. Cushing is there, maybe the Japanese will apologize for their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, their brutal treatment of American prisoners, the Bataan death march and all those dumb Godzilla movies. As for me, I’m not apologizing for squat.

In national Dog Day news, Jane Fonda has announced she is organizing an antiwar trip for later this year, and will be touring the country in a bus that runs on vegetable oil. When I learn more details I will share them with you. However, I can report that Fonda has turned down an offer from former hubby Ted “Looney Tunes” Turner to have the bus run on his hot air because of her concern that he may have eaten all the contents in the grease bucket under his barbecue grill.

Dog Days. They just get weirder and weirder.

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