Soldier Ant 

File this under 'Stupid things that make me giggle, stupidly.' But for some reason, I always get a laugh when someone mis-spells something in the title field of a blog-entry, and that title is then used to auto-generate the filename (and hence, the URL) for that entry.

Inevitably, the poster will then notice his or her error, go back into the entry and fix it... but the typo will live forever in the permalink to the article. Like this little nugget: Google Deprecates Their SOAP Search API.

Is there a lesson to be learned here? Not by me there isn't!

Somehow it escaped my notice that there is an 8-page prose story in the back of the first Fables trade paperback (Legends in Exile) called 'A Wolf in the Fold.' If, like me, you've only recently discovered it (or perhaps you've only recently started reading Fables) then it might interest you to know where the mysterious character Feathertop comes from.

Woot! Congrats to those crazy kids at Zing (and SanDisk) for their newly-unveiled Sansa Connect, a C|Net Best of CES award-winner for 2007!

Someone that I know and love has contributed to the device's much-touted "fun, user-friendly interface" so I may be a little biased, but I think it looks like a sweet little piece of pocket-candy. Be sure to check out the Schwetty Balls-style video review from the CNet booth-babes, too.

For humiliating dogs. Kirby is this year's victim while my sister-in-law Lisa looks on approvingly.

Kirby With Strap-on Antlers, originally uploaded by brian glass.

Tonight, we had our first real knock-down, drag-out dog fight in the house. And it's not at all what we expected.

Ever since Kirby's been living with us (or at least since he's gained weight and become healthy) we always kinda worried that he and Dozer were going to go at it someday. Those two jealous boys circle each other all day, with suspicious sidelong glances and low guttural growls. It's classic pack male behavior: jockeying for status, testing each other's limits. I've pulled them off of each other several times, but it's mostly all sound and no fury. A lot of snarling and shaking of heads with no actual violence being perpetrated.

So... of course... leave it to Miss Polly to show them both how shit goes down.

Kirby wasn't even involved. He was resting his old bones out on the cool floor of our back sun-room. He lays there sometimes when his coat gets too hot for him. Fortunately, I'd closed the door on him and trapped him out there, cause I think he might've come running when the commotion started.

LeeAnn asked me to get a toy and play with Dozer a bit. She'd been meaning to take him for a walk all day but it's been kinda crappy and drizzly out and she gets tired more easily lately (just entered the 6th month of the pregnancy, after all.) So I took a squeaky-plush lamb (once Dozer's favorite toy) down from the kitchen pantry and we started playing on the living room floor. A little keep-away, a little tug of war, a little dining-room fetch—your standard doggie roughhousing.

Miss P was upstairs somewhere, probably snugly nestled in our bed, down under the covers where she spends most of the winter. (Those of you with chihuahuas will understand.) But she heard the irresistible bleating of the squeaky plush lamb and came jingle-jangling down the stairs to investigate.

I'd like to say that I didn't cause what followed. And I'd like to say that my dear sweet (normally) level-headed wife didn't put me up to it. But that would be a lie. See, we've always thought it would be cute if our dogs would play tug-o-war with each other.

Yes, we know there's a size-and-strength imbalance. And we know that—while they share a grudging camaraderie together—Polly and Dozer haven't always been the most civil dogs to each other. But dammit, it's just so darn cute to see two dogs pulling on opposite ends of a squeaky-plush lamb toy. So I tried (persistently, for about 5 minutes) to feed them each an opposite end of the toy.

Polly was interested (ears up, tail wagging, eyes big) but more than a little scared to take hold. Dozer was relaxed and playful, but he didn't really want anyone else on his toy. When she finally grabbed, he let go and she turned with it to dash. ('Ha ha! It's mine' she undoubtedly thought.)

Then Dozer lunged at her.

It went down quick and nasty. Dozer made his feeble growl and a lunge. Polly turned on him and absolutely punked his beta-dog ass. All twenty pounds of her latched onto his silky brown cattledog ear and bit down hard. Real hard. Dozer was crying out like a girl. Polly was latched on, shaking (and scratching the hell out of my arm which I'd somehow gotten in there, in a futile attempt to break them up.) She was only on him for about 10 seconds, but the way he was crying? Must've felt like a lifetime.

LeeAnn was upset. Dozer was bleeding. Polly was shaking. And I was laughing. Damn man. That little dog can really mix it up.

Polly's got these little black dots on the knuckles of her forepaws. We call them her 'prison tats.' And tonight they spelled L-O-V-E.

Awesome. J. Caleb Mozzocco is a local writer that I like a lot (he writes a weekly film review for Donewaiting.com, amongst other things.)

And he's uncovered a real gem—a reprint of a late-70s Captain Marvel comic, in which the good Captain visits Columbus, Ohio! Heck, he even comes to my very own neighborhood, German Village! And rubs shoulders with (apparently) Columbus' very own resident superhero, Minute-Man (the one man army.)

This, for me, is the most exciting superhero-related development in Columbus since... well, when Big Barda declared herself the town dictator.

To all those impassioned, opinionated, excited and verbose mailing-list malingerers who are filling my Inbox, feed reader and mind with this-or-that 'take' on the iPhone: there are people killing and being killed in foreign lands to sustain our filthy consumer lifestyles. Hell, people will die just to make the damn thing. Please, retain some composure.

A couple years back, I blogged about the incident that inspired the well-covered blues song 'Stagger Lee.' And now you can hear Samuel L. Jackson's take, Stackolee (scroll down for it.)

Somehow—in the last half of 2006—our junk-mail situation had become unbearable. In addition to the (sadly) years-long 'relationships' that we've apparently agreed to with Eddie Bauer, Victoria's Secret, Anthropologie, Crate & Barrel and the like NOW we were getting inundated with second- and third-rate catalogs from odd assorted 'Fruit & Berry' vendors tucked away in New England, crap-ass Hammacher-Schlemmer and 'Danbury Mint'-type trinket shops. Places we'd never even heard of, let alone invited into our lives.

Honestly? I was starting to feel for our poor mail carrier. No lie—there were days when I was pulling a full 3 or 4 pounds of mail out of our box. And I'm not naive enough to assume that we're the only household on the route with such a weighty payload. I can only imagine that mail carrier worker's comp claims must be skyrocketing in recent years.

So I finally decided that we'd had enough, and I surprised LeeAnn for Christmas with a year-long membership to Greendimes, a service that gets you off of junk mail lists (and keeps you off.) I'm not gonna get into how they do it —they've got plenty of information on their site. (And an FAQ list.) Suffice to say, it ain't rocket science, but the secret is persistence (which I typically lack.)

After only about 6 weeks or so of membership, Greendimes definitely seems to be worth the cost (which is $3/a month—we joined at the 'Sapling' level and paid 36 bucks for the whole year.) Our average mailbox payload is way down, and our bulk-rate mail seems to be a lot more targeted (fewer blind solicitations and bogus mortgage refi offers.) We mostly just get legitimate bills and some unwelcome offers from companies that we do actually do business with (Chase for instance—is there anyone left in America who's been able to successfully avoid becoming a Chase customer? I wanna shake your hand.)

My favorite feature of Greendimes is the Catalog Stop Request. You just log in, visit your account, and view a list of popular catalogs (from a list of 60, we've probably gotten about half of them at one time or another.) Check one off, type in your customer number (usually you can find it in a yellow box on the catalog's mailing label) and Greendimes does the rest: contacts the company, gets you off their list. And checks back in periodically to keep you off the list. Sweet.

I think I'm driving LeeAnn a little nuts—every time we get a catalog, I pester her to let me cancel it through Greendimes. Of course, some of those catalogs she wants to keep getting. On those days, she gets my crestfallen face.

In addition to all of the obvious green benefits to reducing your junk-mail intake, Greendimes helps you go one step further: they've partnered with Trees for the Future and will plant a tree for you for every month that you're a member! (They select the location and type of tree—projects they're currently funding are in Senegal, India and Haiti.)

I have to admit, I was more than a little skeptical when I finally decided to give it a try. But the junk-mail deluge has slowed to a trickle. If you think you'd be curious enough to join, use this link and Greendimes will add you to my network if you join. (Full disclosure: as far as I know, there's no monetary reward for me convincing you to join. This may change in the future.)

It's been quite a while since I've had cause to visit the Creative Commons homepage, but I did so tonight and noticed that it's changed since the semi-hyped Adaptive Path "Pimp My Ride" edition.

This Digg entry trumpeting the new green look is 46 days old, so... I guess it's been a done deal for awhile now.

I like the clear and unambiguous intro text (as well as the terminology change from 'Publish' to 'License'—Publish always made me feel like I was visiting a portal w/publishing tools. )

Nice job, whoever!

You gotta love being a part of the Internet—if you wait long enough, even the fat kid gets picked for dodgeball. So, yes, it's finally come to pass: I've been 'tagged' (by the inestimable Micah “That's Two A's” Laaker) to reveal 5 things about myself that you (yes you, you collective sweaty mass out there. All.. what, 10 of you?) don't know about me. This should be fairly easy, 'cause I suspect that—for some of you—my life is a somewhat closed book anyway. These all tend to skew toward my college-and-before days....

1. Joy Jelly

2. String Man

My friend Brad was a prolific nick-namer in high-school and he wanted to give me one. It started simple, being based on my name 'Glass.' It started as 'Glass-man.' I said he was prolific, I didn't say he was necessarily gifted.

But if Brad does have a gift, it's dogged persistence, so he kept on trying. In the span of about 1 week Brad ran through permutation after permutation: Glass-man begat G-Man begat G-String (that afternoon was an awkward and sexually-confused one for both of us) which (quickly and nervously) begat String-man. Somehow that one stuck.

I see Brad about once every 18 months or so (he lives far away) and—of course—I'm still 'String.' It makes my wife chuckle but… truthfully? I kinda like it. But don't call me that.

3. Oh Snap

A girl in my class, “T”, was usually a nimble adversary in the verbal quipping department. Perhaps not as quick with a joke as myself, but boy would she speak her mind. So T was usually kinda fun to poke fun at 'cause she'd give you hell, everyone would laugh and that would be the end of it. No harm, no foul.

We were in study hall (in our gym—for some reason we had study hall in the gym that year, sitting on the bleachers. As you can imagine, very little studying gets done when your only viable writing surface is your own knees.) T was sitting at a distance and—I'm not even sure what transpired, really. I think someone spilled a soda on her? Or made a menacing move toward her with a piece of candy-bar. But she loudly admonished the offender with “Do you have any idea how much these jeans cost?”

My own (louder) retort was “Why? Did they charge you by the yard?” A smattering of laughter from the crowd.

I swear to God, I just expected a retaliatory bird-flip. Or maybe even an arm-punch. Not stony silence followed by T's tear-choked retreat from the gym. Oopsy... I still feel like a bit of an ass about that one.

4. Meritocracy?

By virtue of winning that award, I was eligible for a full academic scholarship to a couple of different schools. I chose Bowling Green, here in Ohio. (The only downside was that I had to live on-campus all four five years that I was there.) My father later 'confessed' to me (this was hardly news) that he was glad I won because “there was no way you'd've gotten to college otherwise.” (Reminder to self: research Section 529 plans for our unborn son.)

At the time, I never really felt all that.. um, merit-ful about winning the competition. I didn't really feel like I'd earned it because the way that National Merit scholars are determined is this: all across America, on some day in October, high school juniors take the PSAT test—the Pre-SAT.

It's like a test-run for the SATs. I vaguely remember taking that test (I do remember that I typically did well on standardized tests—I enjoyed them, if you can believe that, and I was certainly a demographic match for the white-male-skewed nature of most of them.) So I took the test in our cafeteria and 2 or 3 months later was called to the office and.. basically.. told 'Hey! You're gonna have a future!' I hadn't even known that the test entered me in the competition. In fact, if I'd had to actually apply on my own, I probably would've blown it off or somehow screwed it up.

There was a little bit more involved—some essay and an application to weed out Semifinalists from Finalists. But one of the greatest things that I ever achieved in my young life was mostly something I fell ass-backward into.

5. Anchor

And now I am honor-bound to tag 5 more people who must share their deepest, inner-most secrets. Which may actually be the most difficult part of this assignment. Awright, who's left on the Internet who hasn't been tagged... I call my brother Brian; my favorite bleeding heart homo, Erik; Rob Duffy (yeah, I know you shuttered your blog -- tough shit. Send 'em to me and I'll publish 'em); Um... list is getting thin. Head hurting... Okay... how about comics-lover, dog-lover, new father and all-around me-doppelganger Dan Brown; and finally... Bad-ass IA (and fellow BGSU grad) Keith Instone!! Rawk.

I just felt like writing something tonight.

Early tomorrow morning, Kirby and I will be heading back over to the OSU veterinary hospital for the next stage of treatment for his ear infection: immunotherapy. He'll be anesthetized (which always makes LeeAnn and I nervous), shaved (a patch, probably on his rear haunch), and pricked with a couple dozen common irritants. Then they wait for his skin to react.

From that, they'll be able to make a more-educated guess at which allergens are causing his problems, and they'll use that knowledge to whip up an immunization cocktail that we'll have to inject under his skin. At first, he'll get a shot once a day (or every other day—I forget, it's been almost 2 months since we went over all this with the doctor.) Eventually, though, it'll be down to once a week or so. We'll do the injections at home (the vet assures us it's easy-peasy: lift the abundant skin on the back of his neck and he won't even feel it.)

After more than a year of lobe-goopings, canal-washings, pills and nasty antibiotic dog-farts, I think injections will probably be the easiest course of treatment we've tried yet. (Of course, the washings and pills may continue. I'm not sure about that.)

Kirby kinda likes going to the OSU clinic. And I think they like him—the last time I took him, he spent about 2 hours in the backroom while I waited in the lobby. When I got him back the top of his head smelled like the student assistant's perfume. Ladies love cool Kirby.

As it turns out, Kirby's not quite ready for immunotherapy. The bigger concern is just getting his ear inflammation down again, and the doctor's worried that—since it came back so fast and aggressively after the last time he was given the all-clear—he's probably got infection in his inner ear, behind the ear-drum. And possibly in the bone back there.

This would be bad. If the infection is in his bone, the next step would be surgery to remove the infected bone. But I'm getting ahead of myself: Kirby's next step is a month of Prednisone (antibiotic) and ear-washings and drops. Again. In February, he goes in for a CT scan to look at the structure of the inner ear, and they might make a small incision in his ear drum so they can take a culture from the inner ear.

Kind of a depressing visit for me. Kirby's not getting any better, and we're kind of spending the next month playing catch-up just to get him back to where he was in October, when the infection was mostly gone.

I did meet a very nice woman in lobby of the clinic who used to breed German Shepherds. She tells me that—wonder of wonders—Kirby is not a Collie-Shepherd mix, like we'd thought. He's a full-blown pure-bred German Shepherd! Just of the elusive (recessive-gene) long-coat variety. This fact, of course, makes me love him no more nor less, but it's certainly interesting to know.

I keep meaning to do more research on the Web about Shepherds (we spent hours learning about Cattledogs for Dozer and Terriers for Polly.) But with the baby coming, that keeps getting pushed back. It's all baby monitors and breast pumps these days...

The lady told me one other thing which was sobering but ultimately I'm glad she told me. I asked her to guess at Kirby's age and her guess was twelve, which is right around our veterinarian's estimate as well. I asked her how old her oldest shepherd ever lived to be... and the answer was thirteen-and-a-half.

I keep hoping that we have Kirby with us for a long, long time but I know that I need to enjoy every month we have with him while he's still healthy. Take every walk, wrestle every creaky old wrestle. Smell every stinky-breath kiss.

Because this is how we roll here in central Ohio:

WESTERVILLE, Ohio - A high school lunch period was disrupted Monday by a greased, naked student who ran around screaming and flailing his arms until police twice used a stun gun on him, authorities said.

Taylor Killian, 18, had rubbed his body with grapeseed oil to keep from being caught...