The Cable Ate My Dog

By Richard Davidson

The Cable Ate My Dog again, and again I'm wondering why I didn't get Satellite TV. Satellite TV never eats dogs, or cats, or even hamsters and gerbils, although I can't vouch for ocelots. It always starts the same. First the dog starts watching E! programs, such as "Hollywood Dogs," or "Dog Dentistry," or whatever, and then it blossoms like a fragmented ark. Without warning, the dog is jittery, and can't make coffee in the morning like you trained it.

Soon all the neighborhood nuclear tacticians are assembling around the swimming pool, and salesmen are disappearing like rats in old treacle. But that's not the worst of it. The toaster starts spitting out hair tonic, and soon you've grown bangs on your kitchen counter, and they're styled like it's the seventies.

Meanwhile, the dog's doing advanced calculus on your bathrobe, and chewing slippers into the shape of mesopatamian heiroglyphics that symbolize the end of all Mankind, and watching Howard Stern. No dog should watch Howard Stern. I thought that was obvious. It's just setting itself up to be eaten by the cable, and it will happen sooner than you might think. Here's what you do:

Tie three AA batteries to an old shoe with some black licorice whips; pour Drain-O into the shoe, and sell it to anybody whose more ethnic than your Aunt Herbert. Then send away through the mail for some empty Pop-Tart wrappers, and when they arrive, use them to jam up the garbage disposal.

Once you've accomplished that minor miracle, it's time to release the badgers. Hopefully, your postman is heavily armed, or it's lights out Cincinnatti, or Cleveland, or any city in Ohio that has a high population of iron filings, and starts with the letter "C."

Now you're ready for the tinfoil boats. Make them large enough to hold a family of French bakers, and then throw them off the roof, and drive your car over them. Recite some nonsense poetry, eat a porcupine on a stick, and sell yourself some insurance. Do this seventeen times, or until you can't stomach any more quills, or meatloaf.

None of this will prevent your dog from being eaten. The only way you can do that is to denounce capitalism, move to Holpana, and sew your left ear shut. Even that isn't a sure thing, but everything I've mentioned will keep you busy for at least a minute or two, and amuse me far beyond what you know was possible.

I miss my dog. If I ever get another one, I think I'm going to name it, and figure out what breed and sex it is, or at least what it looks like. I left my dog in the TV room, and shoveled in kibble like there was snow in a hardware store, which there wasn't. If there had been, maybe the dog would've survived, but since it's been eaten, you can see it on channel 3,425, where it directs a reality show about puddles.

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