The Birthday Interview

(Photo Credit: Probably Moose, but we're not sure. That's definitely me, though, proudly sporting my Terps collar.)

Today is my thirteenth birthday. I know my legions of loyal fans are well aware of that fact and have probably been celebrating the occasion for hours. (Please do so responsibly. You know how I worry about you.) I mention it for the benefit of newer denizens of Roxie's World, who may not as yet have absorbed all the details of my biography. Since today caps off the series of early spring birthdays and anniversaries we celebrate around here (Moose & Goose's 23rd anniversary on March 8, the first anniversary of Roxie's World on March 12, Moose's birthday on March 27, and my birthday), Moose and I have decided to sit down for one of those taking-stock type of interviews. You know, the kind of thing you see when world leaders are commemorating some milestone or celebrities have just gotten out of rehab. This will give Moose the opportunity to play the role of Girl Reporter that she played for many years of her misspent Midwestern youth. And it will give me the opportunity to pop off about the subjects nearest and dearest to my leaky heart: mortality, politics, pop culture, and basketball. Enjoy!

Moose: So, Rox, you've had quite a year--a couple of significant health challenges (an episode of congestive heart failure, a nearly fatal bout of pancreatitis), a whole new career as a blogger, all that concern about your fish when the pond was frozen over. What would you say the highlight of the past year has been?

Roxie: Our new couch. It's amazingly comfortable. Plus, I love the fact that there are pillows in the corners. Those greatly enhance my snuggling options. As you know, the couch is where I do most of my work, since it's the ideal spot for watching our big plasma TV or for listening to you and Goose spout off about whatever you're reading in the Times or the Post. It's my observation post, if you will. I curl up there and even with my eyes closed I can closely monitor the delightful antics of Homo sapiens. I'm also close enough to the back yard to be able to keep an eye on the squirrels and my fish, which is another important part of my job. I am, after all, a dog.

Moose: I'm sure your fans are curious to know something about your creative process. How do you decide what to blog about? What makes a story right for Roxie's World?

Roxie: That's a hard question. Unlike humans, I don't tend to think much about what I do. I just do it. Dogs are the only true existentialists, you know. We are also curious creatures and terriers are bred to hunt, and I think those qualities find their way into Roxie's World. I write about whatever captures my attention--whether because it amuses me or infuriates me or makes me want to get up off the couch and do something. I respond to the things that move me, whether it's events in our household or events in the world. One of my favorite posts is the one called "Stink Bombs," which combined my outrage over the hypocrisy of Mary Cheney (a lesbian who campaigned for the homophobic administration of which her father is a part) with the story of an airplane brought down by a fart (because a woman passenger had lit matches to conceal the embarrassing odor). It takes the sensitive nose of a dog to pick up on the connection between these two stories. That's what Roxie's World is here for.

Moose: I'm wondering if you'd care to comment on this cartoon, which was sent to us awhile ago by our good friend Matt Kirschenbaum (who blogs here):

Roxie: Well, it's amusing, of course, and I'm always pleased to see images that connect dogs to the technologies of mass communication, but I reject altogether the false choice the cartoon sets up between blogging and pointless, incessant barking. I do both and find that each is essential to the full, rich life of a dog. You humans are such black-and-white thinkers, so prone to framing things in such stark, dichotomous terms. Frankly, I think you'd be much better off if you'd loosen up some, try seeing things in "both/and" terms rather than "either/or."

Moose: Tell us what's on your mind right now. What would you be blogging about if you could get me to quit my day job to type for you 24/7?

Roxie: So many subjects, so little computer time. Well, it amazes me that I haven't weighed in yet on the broohaha over the firing of the U. S. attorneys. If my tech assistant were more savvy, I would have installed a "Countdown to the Resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales" on Roxie's World by now. Or maybe we should figure out a way to keep track of all the rats deserting the sinking ship of the Bush administration. The New York Times had a wonderful story this week on Matthew Dowd's loss of faith in the president he served as a chief campaign strategist. On the other hand, I would also like to spend some time celebrating the good things that have already resulted from the Democratic takeover of Congress: greater transparency and accountability in government, new attention to the crisis of global climate change, a vote by both houses to set a deadline for starting to bring troops home from Iraq. It really is astonishing. I hope we'll never again hear people try to claim that elections don't matter or that there's no difference between the two major political parties.

I've also been very moved by the courage of Elizabeth and John Edwards in announcing that her cancer has returned but that they plan to continue his campaign for the presidency. (Frank Rich has a terrific piece on Mrs. Edwards and the role her unflinching honesty about life and death may play in the campaign.) Mrs. Edwards isn't just a role model for people coping with incurable diseases. She reminds us that mortal creatures never know how much sand is left in the hour glass. We should all embrace each moment as fiercely and tenderly as if it were our last--because it might be.

Moose: And from pop culture? What's got your attention there?

Roxie: I was pleased to see that we could watch The L Word without cringing this season. When we laughed, it was usually because the writers wanted us to and not because what was happening on screen was just flat-out ludicrous, though you and Goose insist the show features a lot more work-place sex than occurs in the life of a typical lesbian. Still, I enjoy watching the show with you guys, probably for the same reason you like watching dog shows with me. We all agree that lesbians and dogs are enormously entertaining, and we don't see nearly enough of them on TV. Also, I loved the characters played by Cybill Shepherd and Marlee Matlin and hope they both come back next season.

Moose: And basketball? March Madness isn't over yet.

Roxie: We're still rooting for Rutgers in the women's tournament, though we're sorry they're up against LSU in tonight's semifinal. We've been pulling for LSU, too, because we're not convinced that Coach Pokey Chatman was treated fairly when she was run out of Baton Rouge over vague allegations of a relationship with a former player. (Elizabeth Merrill has a good piece on all we don't know on the Chatman story on ESPN.com.) Now that Georgetown is out of the non-women's tournament, we don't really have a dog left in that hunt, as it were. My Auntie Faye in Tulsa is pulling for Ohio State, so perhaps we'll tilt a bit in their direction. We want the Official Radical Militant Librarian of Roxie's World and The Stephanie Miller Show to be happy, after all. (Auntie Faye blogs here.)

As for our beloved Terps, well, we're just waiting for next year. Coach B was featured in an offbeat little human interest piece in The Baltimore Sun the other day in which we learned that she likes Starbucks, Swedish massage, and Spider Man movies. No word on where she's planning to go to pick up a defensive strategy for next season, but, hey, she's got plenty of time to think about that.

Moose: Final thoughts?

Roxie: Thanks, as always, to my legions of loyal fans for being there. Remember the motto of Roxie's World: What Would Molly Say? That's our tribute to the late, great Molly Ivins, whose rapier wit and indomitable spirit never deserted her. Don't let the big dogs scare you or silence you or make you think you don't have power. When they bark, bark back. When they bite, bark louder. Run with a pack, and no one can beat you.

Peace out, friends.

Stink Bombs

(Photo by Charlie Neibergall - Associated Press)

From the Department of Rank Hypocrisy: Wa Po's "Reliable Source" column reports today that lesbo vice-presidential daughter Mary Cheney is with child. Read all about it here, but don't feel surprised if you feel a little burning in the back of your throat when you do. Cheney and her partner Heather Poe are due in late spring, which means the poster girls for right-wing sexual hypocrisy dutifully kept their mouths shut until after the mid-term elections. Can't you just hear the conversation down at Darth Vader's mansion? "Mom? Dad? We lost the House and Senate anyway, and this little critter is starting to make my tailored pants feel awfully snug. Okay if we go public with the glorious news?" "What? Oh, yeah, sure. And could you give the turkey baster back to George and Laura? They'll need it for Christmas dinner." Official word from the veep's office is, of course, that "The vice president and Mrs. Cheney are looking forward with eager anticipation to the arrival of their sixth grandchild."

Just to clarify: Roxie's World is totally down with the idea of gay families and lesbian motherhood. Where, after all, would I be without them? The hypocrisy here lies in the Cheney family actively campaigning for and being a part of the only presidential administration in American history to propose to amend the Constitution of the United States to enshrine bigotry toward a class of citizens. I don't care if they lamely acknowledged their "personal" opposition to the idea. They have sold their souls to a party and an administration that have consistently exploited homophobia for political gain. Roxie's World wishes great happiness for Cheney, Poe, and the child they are privileged enough to be able to bring into the world, but we consign them to the dog house for aiding and abetting sexual and familial inequality.

From the Department of Just Plain Rank: I pass along the full text of Wa Po's report on the plane brought down yesterday by a fart. No kidding, fans. You humans just slay me. Sometimes the truth is the funniest thing of all:

A jetliner from Washington made an emergency landing Monday in Nashville after passengers smelled matches being struck, a Nashville airport spokeswoman said.

Lynne Lowrance, spokeswoman for Nashville International Airport, said that a passenger on the Dallas-bound flight, which had originated at Reagan National Airport, had been striking matches to mask evidence of a troubled digestive system.

Lowrance said the pilot of American Airlines Flight 1053 asked at 6:25 a.m. Central time to make an emergency landing in response to passengers' concerns about the matches.

Lighting matches on a plane is prohibited, Lowrance said.

After landing, the 99 passengers and five crewmembers left the plane. Luggage was placed on the ground for dogs to sniff. In one part of the cabin, searchers found signs that matches had been lit.

Under "lengthy questioning" by the FBI, the passenger "did say she had some type of medical condition" that embarrassed her, Lowrance said. "She did admit to striking matches to conceal the odor." The woman was released but was not permitted to reboard the flight, Lowrance said.

The woman, who lives in Texas, was trying to get on another flight and apparently did, Lowrance said.

The woman was not identified.

Next time, m'am, leave the matches at home and put the Gas-X in your carry-on!

The Best of Me

Sit down, kids. We need to talk. I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that the moms are going away for two whole weeks. Oddly enough, Emily Dickinson, who rarely traveled far from home, is taking them to JAPAN for a gathering of scholarly muckety-mucks in Kyoto. (The moms call it a "conference." I call it a reprehensible abdication of their parental responsibilities, but you can read about the "conference" here if you're interested.) The good news is that Roxie's World won't be lonely, dark, or silent in their absence. Heck, no! We'll show those moms we can get along just fine without them. We'll keep the party going here in our happy little corner of the blogosphere. Maybe I'll invite my new best friends Britney, Lindsay, and Paris to come in and do some guest posting on how to drive drunk, destroy property, and survive without apparently ever ingesting food.

Or maybe not. The creative division has been racking its brain to figure out how to handle this unprecedented situation. Last summer, when the moms abandoned me to go to Paris for ten days, Roxie's World was barely a toy chihuahua in the dog-blogosphere. I took a long nap. They set up a travel blog, and my Gay Stalker salivated over detailed descriptions of fine wines and French cuisine. Nobody else noticed. Things are different now, of course. I've got legions of loyal fans who count on me for regular doses of insightful commentary, uplifting rhetoric, and eye candy. Oh, right, like this:

(Photo Credit: Random Image Pulled Off Internets [Mount Fuji])

So, after careful consultation with the Department of Travel and Leisure and the Office of International Affairs, we've come up with a plan. Unlike Shrub's war planners, we've also come up with a back-up plan in case the first one doesn't work. The plan is for Moose to serve as a kind of foreign correspondent for Roxie's World. Hearkening back to her days as Ace Girl Reporter of the Cornfields, she'll send in posts and pretty pictures that may shed light on the enduring mysteries of the Orient, or -- and my money is on this possibility -- capture my moms in stunningly embarrassing situations that are likely to arise from their complete ignorance of the history, culture, language, and alphabet of the country in which they are traveling. We entertained the idea of giving Moose designer privileges here for the purposes of this assignment, but the sticklers in Legal over-ruled us, saying it could compromise my claim to being "Sole Owner and Proprietor" of Roxie's World. The Office of Persona Management had problems with it, too, arguing that readers might get confused if it seemed that the humans were suddenly taking charge of my canine universe. I'm telling you, things have gotten a lot more complicated here in Roxie's World as a consequence of our astronomical growth. In any case, Moose will write stuff, and my Aunt Isa, dog sitter and musicologist extraordinaire, will help me put it up on the blog. We'll label the material as Moose's, but I'll have complete editorial control, as always. Are we clear on that now, kids?

In the event of technological failure or in case Moose discovers she'd rather drink sake than write (which Goose would insist was a false choice), we've also assembled our first ever "Best of Roxie's World" list to assure that you have something to read if Moose fails to post or you've already finished the last Harry Potter. We might have called it "Prime Cuts" or "Top Dogs" or "Best in Show," but the moms are tired and cranky and I'm slipping into the depression I always fall into in advance of any separation, so we'll just stick with "Best of Roxie's World." If you're new to this place, you might enjoy going back to those earliest posts in the spring of 2006, when we hardly knew what a blog was. My typist couldn't even put in links, and our main interests were my precarious health and Maryland women's basketball, but the writing, in our unbiased opinion, was still good and the exuberant terrier personality was already apparent.

From the first six months of Roxie's World, we're particularly partial to:

• "A Meditation on Time, Age, Bodies," "Queasy Does It," and "Un-Dead Like Me" are early pieces focused on love, mortality, resilience, and appetite. In this same cluster is the one and only piece ever posted here that was actually written by Moose. It's called "Transitions," and she wrote it on that terrible evening when the moms thought I wasn't going to survive my attack of pancreatitis. She thinks it is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. I mocked it in a follow-up post called "Rumors of My Death."
• My earliest forays into political commentary include "Terriers for Al," where I made my bold endorsement of Al Gore in the 2008 presidential race.
• "Thunder, Near and Far" is my first sustained analysis of war and the psychology of the Bush years. "It Is What It Is" manages to connect home renovation to the authoritarianism and rhetorical violences of the Bush years. "Talking Points" shows me getting snarkier, more sophisticated about incorporating cool images, and increasingly self-conscious about being the child of two English profs.
• Follow my meteoric rise to progressive radio superstardom in the series of posts about liberal talk diva Stephanie Miller's "War on Terriers." (She inexplicably prefers big dogs to terriers, which she considers to be "high-strung.") See also "Winning the War on Terriers" and "Enough About YOU."

By October of last year, Roxie's World was a bloggier place with well-established obsessions (politics, pop culture, and basketball) and an increasingly sophisticated sense of how images might help to enhance the thrill of being here. Some of the best bits from fall and winter include:

• More reflections on the war, including "When You Close Your Eyes," and on the march against the war, "Send in the Twins."
• Several pieces on the mid-term elections, including "Toast," which we like because of the hilarious image of Laura Bush we borrowed from whitehouse.org, and "Sittin' Pretty," which celebrates and analyzes the tidal wave of Democratic triumph that swept the country.
• Some good examples of what the moms like to call "cultural studies," including a rapturous piece on their going to a Barbra Streisand concert, "On Diva Worship"; a reading of Lynne Cheney's 1981 novel, Sisters (which briefly became an issue in the mid-term elections), "Roxie's Reading: Sisters"; and a withering critique of the film Notes on a Scandal, "Notes on a Stereotype." Cheney-bashing is also the theme of a December piece on the announcement of Mary Cheney's pregnancy called "Stink Bombs."
• Sometimes funny, sometimes sentimental slice-of-life stories that are mostly about me and the moms, including the tragicomic tale of Moose dropping her cell phone into the toilet, "Flush"; a couple of heart-warming holiday pieces, "A Dog's Thanksgiving" and "Reindeer Games"; and the sly yet profound "Dream Work."
• We're also inordinately fond of our tribute to the late great Molly Ivins, whose death in January inspired us to come up with an official motto for Roxie's World, "What Would Molly Say?"

Writers always think their latest stuff is their best stuff, but I think it's fair to say that the spring and summer of 2007 have been pretty darn good here in Roxie's World. We're not sure how to explain the outpouring of creativity, which is, according to the English profs, a deep mystery, but we'll give some credit to the new version of Blogger, which makes it easy for even a Luddite like my typist to install widgets and other fun toys like my music box. It's hard to select the best from this prolific period, but here goes:

• We did some of our best writing on basketball this season, as we watched our beloved Lady Terps suffer an early defeat in the NCAA tournament (see "Shoulder to Cry On") and then reflected on what it is we love so much about the game (see "Scarlet Women [Temporarily] Rule"). Don Imus's "nappy-headed hos" comment inspired three posts and brought some of the highest volume of traffic to Roxie's World ever (see "Teachable Moments," "A Moment of Pure Grace," and "After Imus").
• In response to the April massacre at Virginia Tech, we wrote "Grief Work," a dialog between Moose and me which actually is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius if you ask me. The May death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell inspired another dialog piece, the sardonic "Welcome to Hell." "The Birthday Interview" is also a dialog in which Moose questions me on a number of important issues, including my career as a blogger.
• Birth and death have been major themes during this period. "Martha Smith Living" is devoted to the peculiar incident of Goose's death by textual error in a major new anthology of American literature. "A Death in the Family" moves from the death of one of our fish to the winding down of The Sopranos. "A Child is Born" focuses on the birth of Mary Cheney's son Samuel.
• We think June has been our best month ever and refuse to try to select the "best." Take a look at the archive for the whole month, and let us know what you think.
• July has been pretty fabulous, too, but if we had to pick favorites we'd go with "Bird -- and Goose," our tribute to the late Lady Bird Johnson; "Dykes to Watch Out For," which Moose thinks is our funniest piece ever; and "Woman Enough," which focuses on Hillary Clinton's status as front-runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Of course, that leaves out "Hot Stuff," a puff piece in which readers were asked to weigh in on which tennis champ is cuter, Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal. That proved to be one of our most popular pieces ever, eliciting the most comments we've ever gotten on a single post and letting us know that our fan base, though intelligent, is not too snooty to be engaged by profoundly superficial questions.

There you have it, kids. We probably haven't been selective enough, and I'm reasonably certain my typist could have organized all this better, but it's almost 11:00 on Saturday morning, even if the time stamp on this post says it's sometime Friday evening. (What can I say? My typist and I both fell asleep in the middle of a paragraph.) The moms still haven't started packing, and Moose is beginning to worry that she might not learn Japanese by the time their plane takes off shortly after noon tomorrow. (I'm thinking she might not even have figured out where her passport is by then, but that's just me.) She needs to stop typing, and I need to start pouting to make them feel guilty about leaving me. You know how that goes. Come back and see me while they're gone to see how the experiment in remote blogging from exotic foreign places goes. Come back and study this extensive archive of The Best of Roxie's World. There will be a quiz once the English profs are back in town. Come back -- because without you I'm just a tired old dog with two funny moms and a laptop. With you, as I've said before, I've got a whole world in my paws.

Peace out, beloveds, and safe travels to all of you -- but especially to my moms.