HC: A quick Steven Colbert quote (and go out and buy your own copy of the book!)

From Steven Colbert's "I am America (and So Can You)"

THE DE-BALLIFICATION OF THE AMERICAN PETSCAPE

Anyone who has ever spent $5 to purchase a newborn dachshund out of a cardboard box in a supermarket parking lot knows the joy of a litter of puppies. Without them the desk calendars of our nation's secretaries would be blank.

But there is a movement afoot in this country, spearheaded by certain octogenarian game show hosts, to spay and neuter our pets, ostensibly to control their population. Instead of letting animals be animals these people choose to "Cut and Run."

At its very core, this scissor-happy movement is an affront to virility and is brazenly anti-ball. Think of the agony you put your neutered dog through when, during a simple game of fetch, you ask him to chase down and retrieve a symbol of his lost manhood. The ANTI-Cruelty Society is performing these procedures! [FOOTNOTE: One minute they're telling you how important it is to save some endangered species no one has ever heard of, the next they're begging you to neuter your pets. Which is it, more animals or less? You can't have your Spotted Owl and eat it too.] And they say irony is dead!

Worst of all, neutering is birth control, plain and simple. Instead of the wholesale de-sacking of these creatures, we should be promoting abstinence education for our pets. They will get the same satisfaction teenagers do from remaining chaste until the are married. And yes, I am once again advocating animal marriages. [SIDENOTE: NOT animal gay marriages!]