Pappy . . . Is that you?

I was browsing through dog books on Amazon a while ago and found something downright spooky. For a second I could have sworn I was looking into a magic mirror at myself a hundred years from now. Then I thought maybe it was a picture of my granddaddy, though I never met him. In any case, check this out:

An amazing future likeness to yours truly, don't you think? (M says it also reminds him of an old TV newsman named Walter Cronkite.) The book looks interesting, too, and has a lot of great reviews.

As for its author, Gene Weingarten, M says he's a guy who writes funny stuff for a big city newspaper called The Washington Post. He also writes serious pieces that win him major awards called "Pullet Surprises." I wonder if those involve chickens? I like surprises as long as they aren't scary, which poultry certainly aren't, except for large geese.

M also says that Mr. Weingarten has told his family that when he dies he wants to be buried in Washington's Congressional Cemetery, because they let dogs run free there, and that he wants his tombstone to have only his birth and death dates and to say: "A funny man who loved dogs." Oh, and he wants the stone to be shaped like a fire hydrant!

It didn't surprise me to learn that Mr. Weingarten adopted his own dog, Murphy, from an animal rescue shelter after she'd been abandoned in the woods. Boy, can I relate to that! (Except that I got to skip the shelter part.)

I told M that Mr. Weingarten sounds like my kind of human. And M said, "What's not to like about a guy whose Twitter avatar is a big, steamy pile of dog poop?" I thought, you have got to be kidding, M, but I Googled "Gene Weingarten" and "Twitter" and he's absolutely right. Soft-serve, anyone?

Mr. W, sir, you crack me up!