Intrusive Thoughts (Dog Sees All) – George Oleksandrovych

October 11, 2025

Budd Dwyer takes a .357 Magnum out of a brown paper bag on live TV and shoots himself in the mouth.
        I pick up my dog’s shit in a thin purple Dollar Store bag, give it a lucky squeeze before I shoot it into the trash can from six feet away, whispering “Kobe” under my breath. I miss.
        My dog Bugs looks at me with distaste, like show some respect for the dead, man.
        Kobe had a dog named Crucio, named after the torture curse from Harry Potter.
        The Hooded Man stands on a cardboard box in Abu Ghraib.
        I bet Bugs would love to trade places with Crucio, I think, getting weirdly jealous. Unless Crucio was in that chopper too, in which case probably not. I ask ChatGPT and apparently Crucio did die, but of natural causes in 2022. Which is better I guess?
        Before he dies of advanced Alzheimer’s, Gene Hackman is home for a week with his wife’s corpse.
        He looks a bit like Harry Potter. The Hooded Man, not Hackman. Like, if Harry Potter was a practicing Klansman dressed like Kanye in the Akademiks interview. Excuse me, Ye.
        Show some respect for the GOAT, my dog’s eyes scream. Don’t act like I didn’t watch you rap every word of “Gold Digger” into Jen’s hairbrush a few months ago.
        So what?
        Well, I just think you could’ve left a few choice words out, all things considered.
        A police dog attacks a 15-year-old boy at a civil rights protest in Birmingham, and a statue of the scene is erected in Kelly Ingram Park. Three girls in Rick Owens do a TikTok dance where the statue’s just barely visible in the background, and the libs get their collective panties in a collective bunch. The internet’s a fucking rat-king of liberal panties.
        It’s a shame Bugs will never be immortalized in such a rock-hard medium.
        Hey! Speak for yourself, bucko.
        Bucko? Since when has my dog been listening to Dr. Jordan B. Peterson? Anyway, no one’s busy erecting any statues of Bugs far as I know. And Bugs won’t be erecting anything anytime soon, either.
        Can’t believe you’re bringing that up.
        When will my last erection be, I wonder. The year 2079 comes to mind. Wasn’t that the year of the Blade Runner remake? Do androids wet dream of electric erections? If my last erection happens in 2079, I’ll be 85 years old, which feels like a respectable age for the series finale of erections.
        Must be nice, says Bugs, to have that kind of time, just popping hard-ons. Gooning at 2 AM to women who look strangely similar to your ex.
        Elon Musk maybe pops a Sieg Heil at Trump’s inaugu –
        Wait wait. You saw that?
        The inauguration? Of course, Bugs goes. We watched it together.
        No. Me masturbating.
        Oh. Plenty of times.
        My dog looks at me like, I know EVERYTHING brother. I know you and Jen are having way less sex, probably stemming from your porn addiction.
        I wouldn’t say I have an addic –
        Twice a day isn’t an addiction? Whatever you say, man.
        What else?
        I know you hide the fact that you still listen to JRE from Jen after you agreed with her that he’s a right-wing shill who helped get Trump elected.
        Doesn’t mean I agree with him or support his actions, I explain to my dog. I just need something to listen to while I cook, alright?
        A wildfire burns the Palisades to a crisp. The Palisades are absolutely COOKED.
        Okay, chill. Please don’t use that term to describe a national tragedy. Even in your head.
        …
        What’s wrong?
        Nothing. I mean – do you think I’m a shitty person, Bugs?
        We both know this isn’t really about me or what I think.
        …
        Hey, I know what’ll cheer you up, Bugs says. Have I shown you my Jordan B. Peterson impression?
        I didn’t know you had a –
        “Turn around and go pick up that bag of shit, bucko. It’s the first step to getting your life together.”
        Hey, that’s not bad!
        “And honestly, I think you shouldn’t be online so much. It’s cooking your brain, bucko.”
        I thought you said you didn’t like –
        “I didn’t say ‘your brain is cooked,’ did I? No. And you getting slowly redpilled isn’t exactly comparable to a national freaking tragedy either. Look, I just can’t help but think – and please tell me if you think I’m overstepping: if you can’t justify what you’re doing online to your wife, should you still be doing it? I doubt you can even justify it to yourself.”
        Sure.
        “You’ve been wading chest-deep in the internet sewers, bucko. You’ve become desensitised to that shit, just like you are to mine. I mean, you barely notice the smell of my shit when you pick it up anymore, right?”
        What are you getting at?
        “Ingest some content you don’t have to hide. Have sex with your wife while you still can for Christ’s sake. Get offline. Read a book. Here’s an idea: start taking me on longer walks instead of just around the block.”
        Okay, well that’s a little self serving.
        “I bet Crucio used to go on long walks before he –”
        That’s not fair.
        “Life’s not fair buckeye. You need to start rising to the occasion and taking some freaking responsibility.”
        Me and Bugs stare at each other from our respective ends of the leash.
        I turn around, pick the shit back up and put it in the trash. I smile at Bugs, and he wags his tail and smiles right back at me like, You know what? I’m proud to have you as my owner.
        Then I stop. I’ve been on this walk a thousand times before and never noticed the Sycamore tree looming above the trash can.
        I look up – pieces of spotless blue sky glint through the leaves, and for a brief moment, my mind is completely empty.