the History of K9: Part 1

Over at the Troll Report today, BuzzKill asked:
"As an aside, I think it's a panic that you have K9 listed as "Angry Black Guy" on your side bar"

and Troll said:"There's an amusing story about K9's status as a black man that pre-dates her employment as a Troll Report correspondent."

and then Karl asked:
"Praytell what is the story regarding K9?"

K9 with his muse, the mayden he won in a poetry duel

well, what IS the story of K9? i've been asked before, touched on it very briefly at the seattle summit and have alluded to it from time to time. the scope and scale of it is epic, with an unlikely scrappy heroic rottweiler (grrrerhahahaha) who burst onto the scene January 2005 on a blog by WCH called "the possibility of fire" which sadly, no longer exists, or i would send you there to see how the dogfight began.

In the beginning, i was "gone native" and i had a little blog that nobody read about the forest and art. it was the precursor to Chickory. One night i made the decision to click on the tab at the top of blogger that says "next blog" and i arrived on a page with this tremendous rant about how horrible america was. It was after hurricane Katrina and it was a nest of liberals blaming racism for everything wrong that went down in the aftermath. (some things never change)

i came out swinging as "anonymous" and busted up the place pretty good; and the bloggers in there freaked out and demanded that i "show myself". actually, it was the women who came to this guys defense which intrigued me. so while in the heat of battle i had to develop an identity. and i couldnt go in as "gone native" because i sure didnt want these haters coming back to my sweet little nature blog.

i always liked rottweilers, (and had one briefly: another story for another time) and in particular loved the rottweiler in the movie "the omen", hence the tag line of "the rotty with the nanny killing stare", so i got on google images and found a rottweiler that had been in a dogfight and was at the pound. not a beautiful dog, but a scrappy dog, and i chose "him" for my avatar and went back. and i called myself the "sparring K9" because thats what i was. and i was despised. seriously. hated.

now. somewhere along the line, because of the fact i was a black dog, and that i said something to the effect of "people cross the street when they see me coming" an assumption was made that i was a. black and b. male. and i never did anything to correct them. in fact, i made an amazing discovery: that my point of view was received in a way the point of view of some random white chick never would have been.

i had a lot of fun with it. i started calling WCH, the one who wrote the "america sucks" post the "teacup poodle" and set a goal for this game. and the goal was to steal his women away.

Every time i made a comment, it would start with /bark bark bark and end with /grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. FInally my guest appearances resulted in an offer from WCH to write on his blog as a point/counterpoint kind of thing. I refused (you'll see why in the repost) and decided to build my own page. his "ladies" felt i should apologize for refusing to post with him! some of the players are still around and i invite them to add to this tale should they be so inclined, to correct my memory if need be, or to add whatever they want to this tale.

*in the interest of time, i have put the salient, and classic, K9 comments in bold type. just read that if youre in a hurry*





Who the Hell is Ad Hominem?
/bark bark bark


Looks like I got back just in time to prevent my sock puppet from writng checks I have no intention of cashing.

It was the emotional exhibitionism of WCH that fueled the angry first post. My response is not all that different from what Mr Q is saying in his used car salesman post about Bono. I call it compassion fashion. I found the tone of his writing to be condescending and narcissistic and those irritants were compounded by too many words. Same words over and over. You know why I lIke BogsBlog? He's economical. Get in, make your point, and get out.

These are legitimate points. I think fair play means I say what I want and fair play is also that you can disagree, clean my clock, ditto or ignore me altogether. Just because I didn't roll over and decorate my belly with the warm golden pillar does not mean I have not made an attempt to be a gentleman, acknowledge my rotten behavior and move on.

I said in his yard I was sorry, and I gave him props for being my Dr. Frankenstein, the creator of this creature in a manner of speaking. I say straight up, first post, this blog was created for WCH. And yesterday, through my sock puppet post, I have given him the ultimate praise. I think these things are BETTER than apologies.

This blog is called SPARRING K9 not "Channelling Alan Alda" so I refuse to go touchy feely on this. WCH ought to write me a thank you note for creating a situation where a bunch of alpha chicks wade in and start swinging in his defense! Talk about a bounty of good fortune!

You know, I was cool until I really starting thinking about his offer, you know his post called barkbarkbark? The offer was to do a blog together; a point counter-point bit. As I read on, that mad dog feeling came all over me again. Why? Because before I even knew what I was in, this guy had it titled, with my own barks no less, packaged and had laid out a list of rules for me to follow before you could say Jim Dandy. There is something of a liberal mind set to WCH's "containment" approach.
Bogs got it right. I won't be tethered to another's leash.

A conservative dog, like myself says no thanks I'll take my chances, and if it doesn't fly than that is MY failure. And if it does fly it is MY success. Maybe I don't want to talk about what WCH does. Maybe I have my own game plan. Maybe Im not a nice doggie.

And if the price I have to pay for not making ANOTHER apology is to be not read, then so be it. That is the free market system. If the market does not support my product then this blog will die as well it should. This is a capitalist canine mini manifesto. No further apologies will be made.

/grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

next up: K9 realizes he needs to create a "girlfriend" for himself, and fast.