Music - Them Crooked Vultures

We know we are cultured bitches. Do you know any other dogs who have been to Swan Lake and didn't actually bring down one of the swan-like ballerinas? While our true nature is subdued and timid, we are occasionally whipped into a frenzy by the daytime tv judges** whose shows we so enjoy.*

*This is why some of our readers, those of you who have seen us in our natural habitat, have been surprised by our explosive energy after a long day in the basement.

**There has also been some controversy recently as to Maggie's pedigree. We are suspicious that Judge Joe Brown may be her father. See the photo below for evidence:

When we give in to our rambunctious nature, we crave rock and roll music - the kind that our dad likes to listen to in the car. Unfortunately, most of today's rock music is more suited for felines than discriminating canines (have you ever had to endure Fallout Boy?!). It was with great relish that we stumbled on the debut album of Them Crooked Vultures.

The Vultures include John Paul Jones (a la Led Zeppelin), Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters), and Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age). So, not only does this group rock, these bitches have a pedigree backed up with some seriously credible papers.

These rockers bring the best from their respective projects into one bitchin' group. We call Them Crooked Vultures AKC approved! (Awesome Kanine Club)

Music - She & Him

We first heard Zooey Deschanel singing in the movie Elf where she plays the ingenue aside Will Ferrell. So when 'Volume One,' an album created by Zooey and M. Ward, came out in 2008 we picked it up immediately. We were not disappointed by the duo who coined themselves She & Him and were excited to see 'Volume Two' come out.

The music of She & Him in one word, is honest. With modern music, it's standard to hide the singer's voice with synthesizers and heavy strumming of simplistic major chords. We bitches are not fooled by these obfuscations. So when we hear an album that is clean-sounding with chords and lyrics that ring true, we are pleased with the results.

Now don't get us wrong. This is not an incredible album that you'll be tapping your paws to for years to come. But it's a great collection of music, with Volume Two taking a more mature and focused tone than Volume One. We'll enjoy listening to it, especially while we're busy doing something else like plotting to take over the world or licking our boobies. And for another thing, why aren't there more dog parks included in Obama's new Healthcare plan???

Snuggies!

We watch a lot of daytime television, and so are exposed to breakthrough new products all the time. We are experts on the ShamWow, and our father recently had to close out our QVC charge account. However, no television product is as revolutionary and as useful as the Snuggie!

The Snuggie is the most popular of the 'Sleeved Blanket' line of products. (First marketed as the Freedom Blanket!) A miraculous invention, the Snuggie allows the wearer to live their normal lives while remaining warm from a blanket. The only thing keeping millions of

Americans from living their lives to their fullest was hands trapped under blankets. Look no more, America, Snuggie is here!

Our father loves his Snuggie, and often goes about with it belted around his waist as if he's a holy pink-fleeced monk. So imagine our pleasure and surprise when we were given the ultimate gift, the Dog Snuggie! The Dog Snuggie takes all the features that humans love, and adds a few that dogs love too! The velcro attachments make it usable by our tall and fluffy Aunt Izzy (Golden Doodle) and our short and pudgy Aunt Annie (Springer Spaniel)! Also, the pink color accentuates our femininity.

So until the snow melts from the mountaintops and our basement dwelling warms up, just know that as we read, watch tv, and blog; we'll be warm and cozy thanks to the Dog Snuggie.

Book: The Mystery of Capital

After spending a few days watching Judge Judy while our parents were at work, we decided to sink our teeth into something with more substance. No, we're not talking about birds. Our parents - while they claim to care for us - will not allow prey in the house. We wanted topical substance, so we turned to development economics.

We have long been following the plight of the intelligent, yet unfortunate, Moscow street dogs (and here) but have never understood why simple things like bitch friendly bluetooth keyboards are beyond their reach. Hernando de Soto provides an interesting answer in his book The Mystery of Capital.

De Soto posits that, while capitalism has spread like wildfire during the past twenty years, systems for tracking, transferring, and legitimizing capital have not developed. This means that capitalism only operates for a small section of the world's population - those who already had capital. Most of the world's wealth, in fact, is held in informal sectors and most of the world's businesses are informal. De Soto and his students attempt to open legally recognized businesses around the world and find that the process is so fraught with expense, uncertainty, and hassle that entrepreneurs are not able to bear the burden. So, the shop owner in the Haitian slum - to use one of the book's most timely examples - can never leverage their assets to provide capital for a business.

We like de Soto - his respect for the intelligence and spirit of the world's poor is infectious. Like westerners who ascribe third world poverty simply to 'cultural differences' - a euphemism for 'they are not as smart as us' - canine potential is also grossly misunderstood. You would be surprised how many other bitch bloggers are out there using a pseudonym to avoid uncomfortable comparisons of intelligence with their dull-witted human owners.

If you have always wondered why a Moscow street dog - who can learn to commute into town on the metro - cannot have access to simple blogging tools, or why a Filipino - who can rebuild after a slum fire destroys their home and business - can never break the cycle of poverty; you should read The Mystery of Capital. De Soto offers substantive policy prescriptions while avoiding the trap of calling for more foreign direct investment or blaming 'culture.' Mr. de Soto, we salute you (or at least we would if we had hands).

Activities - Jazz Game!

This week, we got off the couch and ran the two blocks to the Trax station. There we pretended to be humans and snuck on board. Humans are so self-centered they often don't see what's right in front of them! Either that or the humans that take Trax are routinely brown and grey colored, quite hairy, and with floppy ears. We arrived 45 minutes later at the Energy Solutions Arena where we watched the Utah Jazz destroy the Washington Wizards.

We watch many sports during the days, but they are usually lower key sports like golf or bowling or tv court; so it was nice to see some basketball, and in person. Or rather, in dog. We loved the game and enjoyed barking at the ridiculous Wizard players, but of course we found a few flaws in the system.

Most notably, why is the mascot of the Utah Jazz a bear? We think that a dog would make a highly superior mascot. Here are a few facts to back up our claim.

Fact: Humans hate bears. They are disturbing and routinely raid picnic baskets. Humans love dogs.

Fact: Bears are less intimidating that dogs.

Fact: Sammi looks much better in clothes than the Jazz Bear.

Fact: Dogs are much better basketball players than bears.

A Jazz dog would be much more awe-inspiring than a Jazz bear.

This is a picture we took of the game from our seats to prove how excellent our seats were. Seriously though, there were only ten rows behind us! If you are up on your dog psychology, you will remember that the most alpha dog sits with his head the highest. There were only a few drunk fatties and a group of teeny-boppers that were more dominant than us. Excellent!

Local politics - teenage terrors!

We - the world's pre-eminent bitch judges - typically howl in support of political dialogue. So, it was with great regret, that we read about a neighboring city whose Council didn't even need Super Dell Schanze to make decisions a bitch in heat would regret.

After a speech at the State Capital by former NYC Mayor Guliani, during the Q&A session, a member of the Orem Youth City Council had the audacity to ask a question! Even worse, the question came from a book! And the worst part? The book was Freakonomics - a title that may or may not cause teenagers to get freaky! We are growling just thinking that a modern teenager would read a thought provoking book instead of updating his Facebook status. More specifically, Stevie confronted Guliani with the author's contention that legalized abortion - not the Mayor's celebrated crime fighting policies - were behind NYC's renaissance. Orem City agrees with us. We all feel that Stevie should have been at home telling his Facebook friends about his latest Farmville achievement, not attending a political speech. In fact, Orem City felt so strongly that it immediately removed Stevie from the Youth City Council for asking his question.

The city attorney, Paul Johnson, used razor sharp legal reasoning to explain why Stevie was expelled from the Youth City Council in his letter of dismissal. Johnson states:

"before we left in the bus for the capital, I admonished everyone to stay together. I gave the warning particularly because I was worried based on past experience that you, Derek and Nick would go off on your own. And that is exactly what you did. Then during Dale Murphy's speech, you three continuously talked among yourselves in a manner that made it harder for everyone else to listen to him... Yours is not the attitude that we want on the Youth City Council. I'm sorry that this has happened and I hope that you can learn something from it."

We couldn't figure out if this was dialogue from a really boring episode of Gossip Girl - you know, the one where Blake Lively decides to get involved in student government - or if the text was actually written by someone older than 17. I hope that Mr. Johnson also told Stevie that he couldn't sit at his lunch table.... Second, don't they teach writing in law school? As lovers of good writing, we recommend Volokh's classic Academic Legal Writing to our attorney friend - he may find it helpful in convincing others that his diploma didn't come from a mail order catalogue or that he learned to speak and write while being raised by monkeys in the Amazon.

The real meat of the Orem Department of Legal Service's letter, though, was that Stevie "used [his] membership on the Youth City Council to advance [his] own agenda, and ended up embarrassing the City and government." What?! To think that a teenager, involved in politics, would ever think of his own agenda is disappointing. It's more likely that his heroes - amazing men and women like Barak Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and George W. Bush - have taught him selflessness through their examples. I bet that the Orem City Council never has an agenda either - I can't imagine where Stevie got the idea that it's ok to have an agenda as a politician. His parents must be truly awful humans and perhaps are using drugs as we click away at the keys with our long nails - it seems to be the only explanation for his behavior.

Even worse, how could you embarrass the "City and the government" Stevie? Didn't you know that governments have feelings too?

We recommend that all cities immediately ban reading and thoughtful deliberation by teenagers. We also recommend that any book on dog obedience, training, or whispering be burned. Only once our cities have protected us, can we all listen to our homegrown heroes - the politicians - regale us with unbiased, non-agenda stories that warm even the coldest hearts. And, in closing, we echo Mr. Johnson's sentiment. We hope you've learned something important Stevie!

Twitter Account

As dogs, we are big fans of short prose. A human would have to use the lengthy phrase, "Hey mailman, if you don't get the hell off of our porch and stop endangering our humans, we will rip the intestines from your body via your butt-hole." Whereas, a well-emphasized bark or two will convey the exact same message. We say, "Orrrunghhh," whereas our father would say, "I need to go outside and relieve the pressure on my bladder! I shouldn't have had that fourth non-alcoholic beer..."

So when we heard about the concept of Twitter, we were very excited. What a great way for us to communicate in short bursts, and another way for you, our loyal readers, to follow us on the internets! So we created a Twitter account this evening, our username is judgmentbitches and you can see our profile here.

Already, Twitter is teaching us about other injustices endured by dogs around the world. Twitter linked us to this blog post about a poor Weimaraner subjected to humiliating rabbit ears. Obviously dog ears are much better for hunting and killing, stupid humans!