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Mike Speriosu's avatar

Hilarious.

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Mark Leidner's avatar

Thank you, Mike.

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Claire L. Evans's avatar

</3

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Mark Leidner's avatar

This emoticon reflects the era during which the anecdote takes place while also pointing to the emotion that drove the composition of the poem. Perfect.

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Meg Reynolds's avatar

This is great.

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Mark Leidner's avatar

Thank you, Meg! Among other things, I hope this poem prompts people to reflect critically on the historical question of who let the dogs out.

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Meg Reynolds's avatar

I think it really does and also makes me realize that I have been waiting for this conversation.

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Mark Leidner's avatar

I googled the lyrics and apparently it's pretty straightforward. My interpretation is that there was a huge party where a dude (the singer of the song) decided that it was time for him and his friends to start really trying to impress the women of the party. Once this man and his crew start doing this, one of the women shouts the question: "Who let the dogs out?" referring to how eager the men are to persuade the women to hook up with them using dog-like determination and perhaps even shamelessness. There are way more nuances to the lyrics that I'm not going to get into, but that's the foundation expressed in the first verse, as far as I can tell. It's actually a complex metaphor for a complex situation. Most importantly, it's a rhetorical question. It's not like a huge mystery, like where in the hell did these dogs come from. I think the speaker and all the people present in the narrative know where the dogs came from. The men who are behaving like dogs (not in a pejorative way) came from the context of the party itself. It's a really fun party and people are cutting loose and sloughing off their inhibitions, as is the case with many if not most wild parties or party-like scenes. The question "Who let the dogs out?' is really more a statement of surprise at how wild or canine the men at this party are behaving. At the risk of overstating this situation's universality, we've all been there before.

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Meg Reynolds's avatar

This is the first thing to make me laugh today, and I am getting an genuine education. Perhaps we are to understand the rhetorical question as self-indicting. Without the context of the party, the men are less likely to assume their most doggish form, and a party is nothing without its people. It is all the components of the party that make the dogs - the music, the style, the food, drink, climate, but more than anything, the emergent reality of the dogs is the consequence of parthygoers' willingness to participate as audience. The dogs are dogs and a mirror to those who pose the question. An appropriate response to who let the dogs out could be, "you. you. you. you. you."

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Mark Leidner's avatar

I love this, and I feel like I am the one who let the dogs out when I heard the song now.

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William Lambert's avatar

I liked the joke and I'm not even a father, excellent.

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Mark Leidner's avatar

You are the father of a kind and considerate comment. I think your child is amazing and you did a great job raising them.

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Amelia Adams's avatar

Epic.

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Mark Leidner's avatar

Thank you, Amelia! I wish I could write this poem a hundred more times so I could receive this comment a hundred more times.

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Ken Baumann's avatar

This absolutely rules

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Mark Leidner's avatar

Thank you, sir! I still remember when you and I farmed hogs together after we both had that falling out with our dads. We thought we would become better hog farmers than our fathers, and we were wrong. Eventually, we reconciled with them, and each of us returned to our own separate ancestral hog farms, but we still kept in touch 🥹

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Ken Baumann's avatar

And I thank God every day for the multi-level marketing company we started years afterwards, and for the love you showed me as we were both prosecuted by the attorneys representing the state of California on forty-six counts of fraud and criminal negligence. Though we were ultimately incarcerated separately, the time we spent reflecting on our shared experiences tending to our respective ancestral hog farms—often while the state prosecutor cross-examined one of our friends or former employees—provided a solace to me that I've not yet found again in my life (in prison).

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