Is cute also in the eye of the beholder?

Today's post is brought to you by my completely awesome friend Vanessa...who doesn't post here nearly as often as I beg her to...

I came across dailypuppy.com through Stumble Upon, and took a little bit of time to indulge in cute puppies because I luurrve me some puppies. Basically, the site features several pictures of a new puppy every day (wasn't sure if you could work that out from the URL), and puppies get rated, kind of HotOrNot style, on a 1-11 biscuit-point scale. And then there are always comments. A lot of comments. Which is interesting to me, because on a site where there's no actual dialog or discussion to be had, where it's just straight-forward observation of cuteness, are you really adding anything valuable when a puppy has already recieved 100+ comments and all you're weighing in with is something like "nanny nanny boo boo! He's so cute!" I don't know. Not my community, not my world, I guess.

Anyway, if you look through the site you will indeed find so much cuteness. Some are cute in conventional ways, like Becky the Border Collie:





Others, like Chelsie the Pug/Chihuahua, are cute in their own way but maybe aren't everyone's type:







As I scrolled through the archives I saw many puppies that I thought were very very cute and also many puppies that were alright but not quite my thing. But I didn't see any puppy that was particularly objectionable, because how could a puppy, even an especially odd-looking puppy, be objectionable? That's just a basic tenet of puppydom that, looking back, I took for granted.

Until I saw Blade, the Siberian Husky.
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Damn, right?!?

Did that make you scream a little? I might have. This isn't even the primary image Blade's parents chose for his profile, the main one is of him laying in what might otherwise be a patch of peaceable meadow, appearing to seethe volcanic, but as-yet-subterranean rage. You might be fooled into thinking that this picture is just a case of bad angle or lighting, but no, the other pictures are just as bad. That's actually how this pup looks. (He does manage to look fairly adorable in his sleepy-time shot, though. The rest are consistently disturbing.)

Now, I know what this boils down to is just unfortunate facial markings combined with creepy eye coloring, and I am sure that wee Blade is actually a delightful, loveable, happy puppy. But seriously?? Can he really be called "cute?" Nearly all of the commenters seemed to think so. Or so they said. And I love dogs. I'm sure I could love this dog. But... just...

yikes.




Don't take his ball. Don't ever take his ball.

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Updated daily, no matter what...almost...usually....just barely.

First - Today is my birthday, but only for 25 more minutes. For my birthday, I was called to work at 7:30 in the morning and sent to Madison, Wisconsin. For those who have no idea where I live - it is not even remotely close to Madison, Wisconsin. In addition, mother nature decided to throw in some gnarly weather on the way home and we got lost TWICE. It is now 11:38 p.m. and I got home 5 minutes ago. I've had better birthdays. So, I've canceled today's birthday and re-scheduled it for tomorrow instead. I've also brought in Vanessa as guest blogger today because truth be told, I'm pretty exhausted and spacey right now. So without further ado, I present ...Vanessa!

Semantic and Pedantic

- supposively (alternately: supposibly)

- irregardless

- deep-seeded instead of deep-seated.

- "just assume" instead of "just as soon"

- "for all intensive purposes." For all intents and purposes can be understood to mean "for all practical purposes," but you tell me what an intensive purpose might be. YOU TELL ME.

- leery plus wary somehow equalling weary, as in: "I'm feeling kinda weary about going to Eric's party tonight 'cause I think Sheila might be there and she might kick my ass since I can't pay back that $100." What? You are tired about it? It is fatiguing you? Is that what you meant?

- expresso (see also: expecially, and occasionally excape)

- could/should/would of. This tends to occur in print, as of and 've are practically indistinguishable when spoken fast enough. As in: "I COULD OF paid some attention to what was going on in freshman year English but I like working third shift stocking at Walmart so much that basic literacy doesn't really seem to matter."


Anyway, not to put too fine a point on it, but these kinds of things really make me want to give people saying them a good violencing. I mean, sweet Jesus almighty and all the saints, learn to speak ya'll.

*At this point I would like to remind everyone that if I've made any spelling or grammatical errors in the non-Vanessa portion of this post, you should ignore them...because it's my birthday weekend...and I'm sleepy...because the birthday gods hate me.

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