Barking at ghosts, mommy issues and playing with dolls

Dear Wrong Tree,

There are plenty of things you cannot see that are nevertheless, in theory, there. Like democracy. Or ghosts. Or the ghost of democracy, calling out in Dickensian pain to warn us off our current path before it is too late, too late, tooooo laaaaaate… but because we are human, we will ignore it and later claim we did “the best we could.” Maybe that’s what your dogs are barking at?

– Worth asking, Rachel

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Dear Rachel,

Dear Mama Punctuated,

I saw enough Garfield cartoons to say, with some authority, that you should mail your mother to Abu Dhabi to get rid of her. But she will come back. Mothers will always come back. There is no escaping mothers. And there’s no escaping this question: do punctuation marks stand for specific letters in curse words? Or are they just randomly chosen? I think we should just start saying “you ampersand pound percentage!” for emphasis.

– Dollar asterisk you too, Rachel

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Dear Rachel,

Dear Recipient,

I see a mutually beneficial partnership opportunity with the barking dogs person. You have two human-sized chew toys. Their dogs need to learn to bark at tangible invaders instead of imaginary friends. Bonus opportunity: take video of the dog-training at its most, erm, enthusiastic, and send that as a thank-you to your gift giver, whose budget is clearly better developed than their sense of scale.

– Get ’em, Rachel