Revenge of the Trailer Dogs

DEDICATION

Trailer Dogs 2 is lovingly dedicated to the following:

BARBIE

Wish you were here to witness the shit that’s going on. You wouldn’t fucking believe it.

S.POCKET

Smartest, nicest, most wonderful guy I’ve never actually met

DKK

The best friend anybody could ask for, but who is already taken (by me)

BEN & SULLY

Your Grandma once said she hoped I had kids as spoiled rotten and as incorrigible as I was, and that they would pee on everything twice as much as I did. You’re Grandma’s dream come true.

RESCUE DOGS AND THE AMAZING FOLKS WHO RESCUE THEM

You are my heroes

And last but not least…

MY OLD MAN

Who would whine his grizzled ass off if I forgot to include him (ha ha)

WARNING

In Trailer Dogs: Life in America’s New Middle Class I warned that you might not like some of the things I had to say, the way I said them or anything else about the book. But no. Some of you, despite all the warnings and cautions, just couldn’t show any fucking restraint and had to go and read it anyway. And then a few of you had the damn nerve to start carrying on about how the swearing in TD1 ruined your life and caused your infant grandchild to start using heroin. Now, here we go again. This is your last chance to bail. If you didn’t read Trailer Dogs 1 and are starting with Trailer Dogs 2, LISTEN UP:

THERE ARE MANY EXTREMELY BAD WORDS IN THIS BOOK

MEAN THINGS MIGHT BE SAID ABOUT PEOPLE YOU LIKE

GOOD THINGS MIGHT BE SAID ABOUT PEOPLE YOU WANT TO LOCK UP

If you are an Evangelical, a Republican, or a Trump lover (God help us all), you’re going to FUCKING HATE this book. If you have no sense of humor, refer to the first sentence of this paragraph. If you still don’t comprehend the particulars of the warning, all I can say is:

YOU ARE A DUMBASS AND EVERYBODY KNOWS IT, EVEN YOUR PETS AND YOUR NEWBORN GRANDCHILD

Lastly, the characters and places in this book may or may not be real or dead, and any resemblance to live folks or dead places is a coincidence. Frankly, some of the people deserve to be dead, but I’m not naming names. Speaking of which, none of the names used in the book are real names, except for the ones that are, and I might have made them up as well, because I have a good imagination.

Proceed at your own risk, and remember:

IT’S MY BOOK AND I CAN WRITE WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT. IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, WRITE YOUR OWN DAMN BOOK.

Fondest wishes,

Ellen

AFOREWARD

JUNE 2016

APOLOGIES ARE IN ORDER

Like I was saying up there on the Warning page, some readers got a little testy about what they read in Trailer Dogs: Life in America’s New Middle Class. Some suggested, in emails and reviews, that TD1 might have gone a little teeny tiny bit too far with the profanity. Too far with Trump bashing. Too far with complaining about the lack of governance in our government. Too far in calling Mitch McConnell an ass worm. (Kentuckians keep voting McConnell back in despite campaign posters with his horrific picture on them, so he must be doing something right, though God knows what it is. I can’t comment on the mindset of Kentuckians. They haven’t been mentally sound since Fess Parker died)

Certain people also told me I went too far mocking celebrities (Oprah’s wooden foot, Amy Schumer’s underpants, Ben Affleck’s freakishly enormous head, to name a few.) When anyone accuses me of wrong-doing, I’m the first to look into their bellyaching to see what can be done to shut them up.

So here’s my mea culpa: MEA CULPA

(To those of you who are not the brightest of bulbs, mea culpa’s Latin for: Now God wants you to shut the hell up) (Mea Culpa IS NOT one of Sinatra’s ex-wives)

In conclusion, I’m confident that come November of this year, we’ll have a new president and renewed hope for the Middle Class. It may be too much to ask, but perhaps even Adam Sandler will retire from show biz by then. Ergo, Trailer Dogs 2 will be kinder and gentler in content than was Trailer Dogs 1. In short, it will be the kind of book you will be proud to send to your newborn grandchild. So dig in!

PREFACE

On second thought, forget the apology and all the crap in the Aforeward. Nobody ever reads a fucking Aforeward anyway.

THE WORLD’S FIRST INTERACTIVE BOOK

BEN, DEEP IN THOUGHT

According to my extensive research, Trailer Dogs 2 will be the first interactive book ever written. As we know, the Bible was carved on stone tablets, which were then given to Charlton Heston. (Sorry, but at this time I can’t remember who actually got the stones from God. The recipient, whoever it was, was the guy Heston portrayed in the movie, whose title I don’t recall either. Do your own homework) Heston, as I sort of recollect from the movie, was hiding behind a burning bush at the time, having just escaped from a prison run by talking apes. (Note to self: Check this out. It almost seems too weird too be true)

Anyways, what I’m getting at is that the Bible, like The Trailer Dogs Chronicles, is very popular. Unfortunately, even modern technological advances can’t make the Bible interactive, because the folks who wrote it are all dead, except for God and Jesus, and they don’t use email or Twitter that I know of. Also, Microsoft hasn’t found a good way to include the Bible in Windows, charge a fortune for it, and righteously fuck it up.

As you know, if you read the stories in The Bible and choose not to believe them, God may interact with you by sending floods and poxes upon you and damning you to Hell. That’s what happens when you question your betters, people. My Christian values won’t permit me to do less when it comes to punishing you for giving me any crap. Hopefully I’ve already made this clear, but what with your addictions and memory loss due to aging, you probably don’t remember that.

After its publication and astonishing success, hundreds upon thousands of readers began submitting reviews of Trailer Dogs: Life in America’s Middle Class, and quite a few of them contacted me via email with questions and comments and requests for my phone number, address, and bank PIN. It was simply not possible to respond to each and every individual and still think of interesting stuff to put in this sequel. For that reason, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and devote the entirety of Trailer Dogs 2 to communicating with readers truthfully and forthrightly, as I am writing the book. How cool is that?

FROM GeorgeForman@oldboxershorts.com

Pretty darn cool invention if you ask me. You’re a genius, Ellen. Contact me for more info about patents.

I had hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to further explain and verify so much of the information I provided in TD1, but for some reason, people don’t trust what they find on the internet or see on TV anymore. I believe the suspicion and mistrust has something to do with Honey Boo Boo’s mother, June, a woman so woefully ignorant, she not only thought she looked hot on TV, but had the nerve to offer tips on how to protect her daughters from a pedophile boyfriend without having to break up with him. This is a question perhaps only Woody Allen’s wife is capable of answering, so I won’t even go there. Let Soon-Yi Allen speak for herself.

For a taste of how TD2’s ground breaking literary interactivity is going to work, let me offer another example. One reader just asked me if I had more recipes to share other than the one for Tuna Salad published in TD1. The answer is YES! In fact, not less than 5 minutes ago I polished off a pound and a half of meatloaf straight from the crockpot.

The recipe for this meatloaf is possibly the best thing that ever happened to humanity, outside of Speculoo Butter and my invention of interactive books. All you do is stir a couple beat up eggs and some dry onion soup, mix it into a big pile of ground beef, and dump the whole mess into a slow cooker. There are other ingredients, but I didn’t have them on hand – such as milk and bread crumbs and salt. Fortunately, you don’t need that kind of fancy gourmet shit for this to turn out really good.

Anyways, let the crockpot work its magic for a few hours, and you have yourself a gigantic, somewhat turd-shaped hamburger that you can eat with a fork. The down side is that your dogs will smell this thing cooking, and for 3 hours they’ll whine and carry on pitifully, and probably piss on the floor to get your attention. Ignore them. Also, if you take the lid off the crockpot too soon, you’ll find yourself scarfing down 2 pounds of raw hamburger and eggs, which will taste pretty darn good, but which will result in your old man having to dump the black water tank in your trailer two or three times during the night. And then you’ll have to listen to his whining and carrying on, and who the hell wants that when you’re having stomach cramps and trying not to shit yourself in bed? On the bright side, you’ll have another half-pound of meatloaf for the next day.

A lot of the recipes in TD2 will be tailored specifically for the crockpot, because as you know, I live in a 29-foot travel trailer, and cooking our eats any other way requires motivation and dish washing skills, two things in short supply around here. Living in a travel trailer is very difficult, because of the limited space and the constant hunger that stalks one due to severe depression that arises from having to live in a fucking trailer. This subject will be addressed, interactively, in an upcoming chapter.

So now you know what to expect in Trailer Dogs 2. If you DON’T KNOW by now, it might be because you are kind of dumb and shouldn’t have bought the book without first buying and reading Trailer Dogs 1 and giving it a good review as your betters did. For those loyal and intelligent souls who are sallying forth with me, and who are already pre-ordering Interactive TD3, here’s a little bonus: The recipe for Crockpot Meatloaf. It’s free, as a token of my appreciation.

INTERACTIVE CROCKPOT MEATLOAF

2-1/2 pounds of hamburger (If you are a vegetarian you can use ground fish)

A couple chicken eggs (I guess goose eggs would be ok here too, but I’d steer clear of rodent eggs)

Some bread crumbs (Maybe you could make these out of bread, if you had some, which I didn’t. I only had a few dried out hamburger buns, so I skipped the bread crumbs)

Dry onion soup mix (This comes in a foil envelope that’s really hard to tear open. Don’t cut yourself when you get mad and stab the goddamn thing 50 times with a butcher knife)

Some milk if you have any (I guess you could substitute something. I didn’t because I didn’t know what it would be)

Salt & Pepper (This can be added after the meat is cooked if you like)

Mix it up and put it in a crockpot bag. Turn on the crockpot for like 6 hours. Serve directly from crockpot, with ketchup, if desired. Serves 1.

Good, isn’t it? Godammit, I told you not to take the lid off too soon. What the hell is wrong with you people?

BEFORE I GO ANY FURTHER…

As he often does, my old man had to stick his big ruby-speckled nose in my writing activities and stir up his own shit stew. He’d no sooner read Chapter 1 when he put me on notice that, in his very learned opinion, Trailer Dogs 2 could not be called interactive as I painstakingly explained to you. Here’s what transpired between me and My Old Man via email:

MYOLDMAN: In my very learned opinion, Trailer Dogs 2 ISN’T interactive. Note the following definition I henceforth obtained via the internet:

interactive - ɪn·təˈræk·tɪv

(of two people or things) influencing or having an effect on each other.

Allowing a two-way flow of information between a computer and a computer-user; a fully interactive map of the area.

ME: What’s that word ɪn·təˈræk·tɪv mean? Looks like ISIS talk to me.

MYOLDMAN: You should reconsider calling TD2 interactive because the book isn’t in real time. The writer of such a book could just make up things and bend the facts, claim it was what people were saying, and pass it off as being interactive. Very deceptive!

INTERACTIVE READER RESPONSES TO THIS CHAPTER

FROM: A Loyal Fan @gmail.com

What a dumbass! Nobody cares about his shit! Our time is being wasted and anyways, there are no refunds.

FROM: A True Fan @gmail.com

U R right. I feel like im going 2 puke on my keyboard every time I hear ur old man stick his nose in where it doesn’t belong. LOCK HIM UP!

FROM: OJ@prisonmail.com

If u send me ur address& ur key, I will kill that motherf*ucker with my bear hams.

FROM: AW @gmail.com

How old r u? Do you ever like to xchnge nakd pix on the net?

ME: Well, my readers have responded interactively to your learned opinion, and with one voice, they’re all saying you should STFU

MYOLDMAN: What you seem to be doing is offering blatantly false information, and then implying it’s merely a different version of the truth in the hope your readers won’t be smart enough to catch on to the scam. It’s contemptible!

ME: Where do you get off calling my readers contemptibles? Ur the contemptible one, not them. They may be uneducated and ignorant, but don’t call them contemptible, or they’ll break the internet googling to see what contemptible means. They’re smart enough to know when somebody is trying to con them. I would never do that, because I love the stupid people. Anyways, I’m not a professional writer like Stephen King, or whoever else is a professional writer. All I’m doing is presenting different versions of the truth so my millions of followers can make up their own minds.

MYOLDMAN: I really don’t think this pathetic ruse is going to sell many books.

ME: We’ll see about that. Oh, and pick up some burgers on your way home. And get me 2 super-sized fries & a Coke while you’re at it. And make sure it’s a DIET Coke.

WHY DO YOU WRITE THIS KIND OF CRAZY SHIT?

BEN & SULLY, MOCKING ME, AS IS THEIR HABIT

Now that readers fully understand interactivity and how the innovative Interactive Trailer Dogs book works, I want to share the following inquiry I received (interactively) just moments ago from a fan I suspect lives somewhere in Mississippi or Alabama - most likely South Carolina - but I wouldn’t rule