Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘chew strips’

Safety News For the Nation Within

http://www.ajc.com/news/lifestyles/health/popular-dog-treat-maker-issues-recall-over-salmone/nk4D4/#__federated=1

And in publishing news, the paperback of PAW AND ORDER comes out tomorrow. “Makes a good springtime gift!” says Admin. “What’s a springtime gift?” says Spence.

And also tomorrow: WOOF.

Shout Out To Momo (Revised)

“Just learned a word of Japanese,” Bernie says.

Japanese? All I know is we once worked a case where a chef at Cafe Sayanora was stealing some kind of rare fish. We found the fish, but too late: I knew that from a block away.

“Momo’s the word,” Bernie says. “It means Peach. And a dog named Momo has just qualified as a police dog in the western prefecture of Nara. The kicker is that Momo’s a Chihuahua, weighing six pounds and change.”

Whoa. Do I like hearing that? Not one bit. Do I need to explain why? I guess I’ll just go lie down, maybe behind the couch.

“Hey, Chet – how does a chew strip sound?”

What kind of a question is that?

“Easy, big guy.”

Goldman Sachs: Perp?

It’s a beautiful morning. The guys – Bernie, Spence, Admin – are sitting in the sun, talking about some dude name of Goldman Sachs. I’m watching the water flow from the mouth of Leda’s stone swan on the patio – a lovely sight in the sunshine.

“Could we have bought some of these credit default swaps?” Bernie says.

Admin shakes his head. “This isn’t like Hawaiian pants, Bernie.”

“Be nice,” says Spence. “Just give us your little lecture.”

Admin sends a quick unfriendly look his way. “All right,” he says. “Suppose you created some bonds, based on the future value of anything – chew strips, let’s say.”

Suddenly Admin has my full attention.

“Some of these chew strips are top quality – like the kind from Rover and Co. Others – not so good. They’re piled up in a tower, best ones at the top.”

A tower of chew strips: one of the most interesting things I’ve heard in a long time.

“But who wants the crummy ones?” Admin was saying. “So you pile those in another tower, with the best of the worst at the top. Then you go to the chew strip rating agency and say – see these at the top of the new tower? They’re at the top, right? So the chew strip rating agency gives them the same grade as the ones from Rover and Co., even though they’re crap and will never sell. So then you sell the bonds – just a promise to pay when the chew strips sell – to big investors all over the world. Meanwhile, there’s also an insurance you can sell in case the bonds go bust, but you’ve got to be a Wall Street player to buy it. This insurance is called a credit default swap. You don’t even have to buy the towers to get it. You can just buy the insurance, betting that the towers will crash. And guess what – Goldman, knowing because they created them that a lot of these bonds were crap – bought lots of credit default swaps, betting against the bonds they were happily peddling out the other door.”

“So who’s going to jail?” Bernie says.

Not that Goldman dude, I hope. Anyone building towers of chew strips can’t be all bad. Also – how would you get a job at the chew strip rating agency?

Marcia Ball

Bernie’s a big fan of Marcia Ball. Once we actually saw her play. We were working on a case, the details kind of fuzzy, but at one point we were at this outdoor party at a rich guy’s place, and Marcia Ball was the entertainment. Bernie and I were real close to the piano. Can her fingers fly, or what? 

Bernie’s favorite Marcia Ball song is Let Me Play With Your Poodle. He gets a big kick out of it, thinks it’s funny for some reason. Don’t get it, myself. I’ve played with poodles, more than once. Take this poodle named Hortense, for example. She tried to snap up a chew strip that I knew for sure, or almost, was meant for me. What was funny about that?