smonster, I ended up spending 6 months with a guy that sounds very much like this guy...minus the math skillz.

I should emphasize, painful months.

The 'devil's advocate' business ended up being verbal abuse and angst for its own sake.

It was a good experience...a learning experience. And solidified my embracing of this bit of wisdom, "When people tell you who they are early on...believe them."

I hope this one turns out better!

Damn mathematicians, always trying to map something onto something else*. You can't map a grandparent onto a dog.

Yeah, XKCD sort of talked about that, albeit for physicists. [link]

Oddly enough, I once started a bar fight in New Orleans by mapping a grandparent onto a dog.

he went on a tangent about how pets are a huge use of resources and we have them because we don't have enough daily social interaction and we should give them to old people, no wait, we should give old people to young people instead of pets.

Or we could give him to a dog.

he went on a tangent about how pets are a huge use of resources and we have them because we don't have enough daily social interaction and we should give them to old people, no wait, we should give old people to young people instead of pets.

He really doesn't have a clue about the evolution dogs and their relationship with humans!

I am incredibly amused. I'm watching a rerun of Nikita, and for some reason, they had Stan Lee as a bystander being interviewed, with the name "Hank Exelsior"

Speaking of the evolution of dogs. I had one of the most challenging doggy lama appointments ever today.

A Bloodhound puppy.

Oy. Especially bad because 6 months ago, I begged the family to leave the puppy with the litter as long as possible...they brought her home at 6 weeks. She is now biting their child and strangers. I begged them to crate train her, especially at night. Nope. Behavior problems like whoa.

She is sweet and adorable and HUGE.

And she will never be obedient. Ever. She can't be. Her breed structure won't allow it. She should be on a farm, sleeping outside with a bunch of her kin, trained to track and given the opportunity to live her life nose-down.

I see 10 years of struggle in their future.

Fortunately, they get it. They've done enough after-the-fact research to know the challenges. But they won't even consider re-homing her. On one level, I respect that entirely...and I will be there for them throughout, but it is going to be a slog.

Sigh.

It may be even funnier if you actually understand mapping.

I should clarify that I DON'T really understand mapping, so I was talking about myself, not Laga.

Yeah, bonny. He was pretty clear about liking to argue and not wanting people to take it personally. IOW, *very* small dose friend for me. I decided pretty quickly I didn't want to date him. And I had a visceral squick when he touched my arm casually. So, no.

brenda, for real, or in a "bit my sister" kind of way?

I'm making him sound awful. He's not. But he's also most certainly not for me.

Oh, bonny, I was going to ask how that went. Okay but not great, sounds like.

we should give old people to young people instead of pets

They did kind of do that to us in high school. We effective had to do charity work every year, and Help The Aged was a popular option, where you get a senior citizen to visit. I spent the whole time panicked we were going to open the door to her corpse, and shying away from cleaning up dubious substances in her flat. Also listening to her talk about coloured people, and marvelling at how they could get jobs nowadays.