The Salty Paws | NOVEMBER 2023
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IT'S:
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18th AT MIDNIGHT
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IN-SHOP SALE STARTS
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18TH AT 5AM
CLICK ON THE PHOTO FOR MORE INFORMATION, CHUCKLES
THE END OF AN ERROR
 Reagan Cola has left the building.
She left us for a real, permanent job in another part of the country. She has yet to give back her keys to the shop, though. We're pretty sure it's so she can have keg parties when she's back in town for court appearances.
She started working for us when she was a teenager. My nickname for her was "Reagan Cola - Reagan Cola." I don't know why. Perhaps it was because other celebrities like Sting, Cher, and Bono opted for one name. I felt Reagan was much more devious than any of those powder puffs and deserved double. Like Boutros Boutros Ghali.
 She continued to work for us through high school, and summers when she was in college except when she did a semester in Europe. She even sat in a couple days at the shop when Liana and I recently went to Newfoundland for vacation.
 But now she's moving to a state far away and we'll only get to see her rarely. She'll probably only be back for Thanksgiving and / or Christmas.
I'll be honest, saying goodbye to Reagan was like saying goodbye to my good college friends. The only difference being; I was naive back then and thought nothing would change.
 But now I know it means you drift apart as the burdens and necessities of modern life thrust their demands upon each of you.
Which is why I made out with your mom. Please don't tell Derek.
I will miss Reagan so much. We have identical senses of humor. I remember solid days at the shop just laughing and laughing at one stupid joke that no one else would find funny. I'm going to miss that the most. And watching her come into my shop as a nervous young girl asking for her first job and leaving as a woman pursuing a career is immensely satisfying.
 Reagan. Thank you for your time and your hard work. Thank you for filling many of my crappy days with fun and laughter. Thank you for letting me poke fun at you incessantly. Thank you for nagging me. Most of all, thanks for letting me be a part of your life.
For Liana and I, there was a time before Reagan, a time with Reagan, and time after Reagan.
It's the march of time. Like a large, heavy, slow unstoppable animal. Like a hippo or Tom M. It stops for no one and no thing. It will rudely brush you to either side. Whole, or in pieces. It makes no sense.
Liana and my future will never be as good as the time with Reagan,
but it will never be bad, either.
Liana and I are so proud of you. Please don't forget about us up here in the Frozen State with only one border and one syllable.
~~Don (Not a Dog)
WE LOVE HATE MAIL!!! --
CHEAP BUZZ
 I make enough stupid mistakes in this bent little life I'm living without having to heap on the stupid mistakes of stupider people than me. Right? Isn't that in the Constitution? The New Deal? The Taxpayer Bill of Rights? The Teapot Dome Scandal? Seward's Folly? What about The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution? It's somewhere in there. You can trust me on that. I've read them all start to finish.
With that being said, I think my rights have been violated by customer M. Parrish's product review of our "Cheap Buzz" collar and leash ensemble. You be the judge:
●○○○○ "I ordered the VW dog collar and leash, I have no idea what this is I received. I will not use it on my dog. I cannot even tell what it is. Not what I ordered or wanted."
What she wanted:
What she ordered:
Oh yes, you did order that horrible, horrible collar with all the cheap beer cans on it, my lovely little psychopath. See?
You can see the restrained response I left on the product page. Originally, I thought I shouldn't respond because she never asked for a refund and I really didn't want to reward her for being a self-absorbed, passive-aggressive jerk.
But the whole situation kept picking away at my brain until it was dry and scabbed. I had to respond. People who saw this collar and/or leash would think the quality sucked. Or they'd think I sucked for sending her the wrong stuff and not responding.
In the eyes of the general public, I had to respond in a measured, restrained way. In my newsletter, however, I can respond however I want.
And I want to respond as a raving lunatic.
Dear Matrisha,
I find it amazingly apropos that you wanted the VW Collar and leash, but ordered the Cheap Buzz ensemble.
 Most people with drug or alcohol problems don't remember what they did the night before. Believe me. I've been there. After drinking an entire bottle of "Eddie Chuckleberry's Royal Vdka (sic)" I once ordered every single part of a 2018 Ford F150 through the mail thinking I would put it together in the morning.
Everything was delivered by an army of enormous flatbed trucks with small cranes about two weeks later. I had no idea what was going on. All the parts were there, but there were also things like topiary trimmers, crawdad peelers, and the complete works and nude photos of Ariana Huffington.
Unfortunately, I could not buy the tiny computer that regulated fuel consumption because it was a matter of national security. Evidently, not selling the engine computer to me kept vital technology away from the North Koreans and Chinese.
 I made my money back by charging local middle-schoolers $20 to shoot my neighbor's car with a rail gun I got from a military surplus garage sale at Camp Pendleton the same night. I have yet to make a dime on Ariana Huffington's nude material, though. Not even from the middle-school boys drowning in their own hormones after firing a rail gun all day.
 Anyway Matrisha, I suggest you dry out for a couple days and try sending me the offending collars you ordered. I realize the world is a scary place without the buttressing effects of sweet, sweet, life-giving alcohol. But you need to persevere. The refund will be worth at least two cases of Thunderbird fortified wine and perhaps several barely-opened bottles of muscatel.
In closing, I would like to invite you to my private nude beach in St. Tropez. Send a current photo, updated resume, and proof you are STD-Free with all speed.
I remain,
~ Don (Not a Dog)
IT'S :
This is our "ONCE IN A LIFETIME ANNUAL SALE!" It is the SINGLE BIGGEST DAY we have in the shop and on our website.
 If we have a bad Early Bird we will be forced to sell Fudgie to one of those YouTube Channels that takes animals, puts them in horrible places like the bottom of a well or a drainage culvert and rescues them for clicks. This is a REAL thing. You've seen them. "Puppy Caught in a Drainpipe," "Kitty Trapped in a Chimney," and my favorite, "Scared Tarantula in a Man's Boot." I think Fudgie would have a lot of fun with his new career considering he gets into those situations on a daily basis.
But we would miss him. And you would miss him when you came into the shop. That's why you've got to gather together all your posable and disposable income and buy everything you can on our sale. And take a tip from Matrisha Parrish, alcohol brings out the very finest in our nature. It makes us buy tons of stuff online, feel sexy and stops small caliber bullets.
THE HISTORY OF EARLY BIRD
 Like most holidays in our culture, stuck-up people with college educations and the stupidest glasses you've ever seen will tell you that Early Bird and everything else has pagan roots.
In the late Triassic Period of the Mesozoic Era, there were virtually no pagans. The cost of living was astronomical and dinosaurs used human beings as garnish. Also, pagans were pretty dumb. They just worshiped anything you could imagine-- rocks, trees, compost piles, liver flukes, and whatever bog they were going to be strangled in.
Fast-forward 201.3774886 million years and Pagans were all over the place. You couldn't swing a dead Egyptian cat without hitting one.
Then came organized religion to mess everything up. They insisted everyone worship an single, invisible, angry God that was only too happy to smite your ass for the slightest thing. Like eating a pork chop or touching your wee-wee. That would get you reincarnated as a lobster or an eternity of hellfire and brimstone.
 Then the pagans were clobbered into a pale, pink, gelatinous pulp single-handedly by Lemuel Haynes - The Biggest Bad Ass Founding Father of the United States. And the coolest thing was that Lemuel was virtually indistinguishable from legendary saprock profligator and drummer Phil Collins.
Lemuel founded Early Bird in 1956 with William Frawley and Carmen Miranda. It soon became a great hit with the rank and file of the Boothbay Region primarily because of all the tomfoolery.
Did you know this is the third year I've used that picture of William Frawley?
THE END.
EARLY BIRD FACTS:
FACT #1)
On Saturday, November 18th at midnight, everything on our website will be 40% off. Then at 4am, everything is 30% off. At 8am everything is 15% off for the rest of the day. BUT YOU NEED THE CODES!! It is all summed up in this handy table thoughtfully constructed by a 6 year old after eating 3lbs of straight sugar in the form of Coco Puffs:
CLICK ON THE TABLE FOR MORE INFO, DUMMY.
FACT #2) 
OUR PHYSICAL SHOP IS NOT OPEN AT MIDNIGHT. ONLY OUR WEBSITE IS. PLEASE STOP SHOWING UP AND KNOCKING ON THE SHOP DOOR. I WILL ONLY LAUGH UNTIL YOU CRY OR GO AWAY.
FACT #3) There are excluded items. DON'T THROW A HISSY FIT BECAUSE TENNIS BALLS ARE NOT PART OF THE SALE. Rather fit your head snugly in an industrial vise and hit yourself in the head with a ball-peen hammer 500 times. No. A rubber mallet won't work. It has to be a ball-peen hammer.
FACT #4) I have been busting my ass putting new things on our website. It's all on the "NEW STUFF" page. I will continue to do this until the sacred night.
FACT #5) FREE SHIPPING AT $75 as long as it's going to the lower 48 states. We can't accept orders from the two US freak states or places in the world that are currently under bombardment or smell funny like Tunisia.
 FACT #6) Everyone who shops with us on Early Bird gets entered into our Whopping Gift Certificate give-away whether they want to or not. We will be giving away the following:
ONE $100 Gift Certificate
TWO $50 Gift Certificates
FOUR $25 Gift Certificates
EIGHT Rounds with Don in a World Boxing Association Ring.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE WHOPPING GIFT CERTIFICATE GIVEAWAY WITHOUT BUYING ANYTHING YOU INGRATE.
FACT #7 I will be spamming you this month and December. Fortunately, I will only be spamming you with emails instead of actual cases of Hormel Spam. So just bear with us for a couple months and we can go back to making fun of people I hate once a month.
Free Shipping on All Orders Over $75
ONE DAY SALE 11-18-23. THAT'S IT, JUGHEAD
Click Here to Forward This Mega Sale to One of Your Friends Who Smells Like Tunisia.
Sniffin’ Around
The Boothbay Region
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GARDEN'S AGLOW
When: Starts November 18th
Thursday - Sunday
November & December
Where: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
What would you do with 4 hundred bzillion LED lights? I'd dump them all on my neighbor's lawn and set them on fire at 2am the next time he has an out of control party.
Evidently, the Maine Coastal Botanical Gardens found a less useful way to use them; they hang them all over a bunch of trees and stuff on their property. And don't bother asking, they won't set them on fire no matter how much you cry like a baby or threaten to streak through the grounds.
Your host, Señor Borracho
But it's pretty resplendent if you ask me. And they've got the groping teens and assault and battery charges to below Philadelphia levels.
You may say to yourself, "Jethro, why travel all the way to Boothbay to look at a bunch of non-denominational lights strung up in the woods? There's a whole bunch of Whacky Inflatable Tube Guys outside the Buick dealership in Rumford that tingle the senses."
And that's where you would be exposing yourself as a rube. Gaze upon these photos with your naked eyes and despair:I would like to thank everyone for voting for us on all these "Best of Maine" contests. We don't ever win anything because we are a small, stinky, hole in the wall located in a place nobody ever even heard of. To hell with it. I'm just going to fill the rest of this column with photos of people drinking and information regarding Gardens Aglow.
Or You Could Just Do This.
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The Harbor Dogs' Stories
(Formerly Max & Aug's Dog Blog)
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 You'd think with all the hubub of Early Bird, I'd just drop the Harbor Dogs' Story for this month. But my 8th grade counselor said I lacked commitment, consistency, and resolve. Even after rolling doobies for him after class. I've been living my life to prove him wrong even though he ended up swallowed whole by a 13ft boa constrictor at a Florida roadside attraction after getting addicted to injecting Liquid Paper directly into his temples.
 On that cheery note, our 2-Human / 2-Beast Tribe went to Newfoundland and rented a bunch of Short-Term-Rentals. The best one we rented is shown on the left.
Haha! Just kidding! Fudgie would have lasted all of about 1 minute at that rental if you included the time it took for him to fall and hit the rocks.
Which got Liana and me thinking; what are the requirements for our 2 Human / 2 Beast Tribe whilst traveling? In other words, what are the things a short-term rental property MUST have for each of our tribe, and what are the things a rental property CAN'T have for each of our tribe in order for us to rent it?
 The answers (primarily in list form), will surprise you.
Can you guess which of my tribe members requires the patellas of their enemies be delivered by the Seventh Horseman of the Apocalypse on a daily basis? What about the one who can't be in close proximity to elderly people or tar pits? How about the family member that cannot be near abandoned hospitals?
So get yourself a cup of hot chocolate or take a deep pull from a cracked half-gallon of Eddie Chuckleberry's Royal Vdka (not a typo) left in a Florida swamp for a long weekend and click on "MUSTS AND CAN'TS" -by Don.
See You Next Month!
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