Time for your annual Cat Scan.

You can think about it all you want, but at some point you just have to accept the fact that some things on the Internet simply don't have a reason for being.

They are there just because, and they are awesome, and we are grateful, end of story.

Like planking and meme's and ripping off Justin Bieber and Chuck Norris.

This is one such thing. It's a website called:

 

It's pretty simple really:

1) Catch your cat.

2) Hold it down on the scanner.

3) Press the 'scan' button.

4) Locate plasters to put on your multitude of fresh cat scratches.

5) Email image to Cat Scan website.

6) Laugh a bit.

7) Carry on with your life. 

You put a jersey on your cat? Shame on you crazy lady!

kitteh has teh furry goodness

Heeelarious. Unless you're the cat who has been disturbed from his 12 hour day-nap to be pressed down on a scanner. Then probably not all that funny.

Go check it out here, there are dozens. Then go scan your cat.

The madness is crazy

I recently finished this book:

It's by this guy:

Jon Ronson

I actually first came across this guy because he is a particularly funny columnist for The Guardian, and for some reason I find myself particularly fascinated with particularly funny columnists.

One of his columns made me laugh my ass off (don't worry, figuratively, not literally). 

It's about how his 8 year old son asked him what the world's worst swearword is, and you can read it over here. Seriously, it's worth clicking through to, if you haven't already read it, it's hilarious.

After reading his column I developed a mini-sized writer crush and went looking for other stuff he's written.

The Psychopath Test is less a novel than a series of connected pieces all related to his journey to understand what it means to be a Psychopath. It's interesting and funny and strange, and a little scary, and quite different as far as books go. But I enjoyed it. He visits prisons and mental homes, and mental homes that are prisons, and meets some mad people. It made me look at my world and wonder if perhaps there aren't more crazy people around than I had at first thought.

One of the stories in the book is about this guy who gets out of a prison sentence by pretending he's a psychopath, and so he gets put in a mental hospital instead. But in the end instead of prison for five years this guy gets stuck in a looney bin for something like twelve years, all of which he spends trying to convince the authorities that he's not actually crazy. And I guess nothing sounds more crazy than a desperate man trying to convince everyone he's not crazy!

Jon Ronson also wrote this:

Which I haven't read yet. But I did enjoy the movie. (It's got Ewan McGreggor and George Clooney in it, what's not to like?)

Seriously, read the swear word column. You won't regret it.

What are you reading?

Exes, friends and ex friends.

Well hello Monday, you again? Feels like you were only taunting me just the other day. Here's yesterday's Sunday Times Column, hope you enjoy. (PS: I've left in some of the bits the Sunday Times edited out, so here it is, warts and all.)

A MILLION MILES FROM NORMAL – By Paige Nick
WHEN EVERYTHING WENT PEAR-SHAPED.

I was out with a group of girlfriends recently (there may or may not have been wine and whisky involved, I can’t be sure) and we got into a bit of a debate about whether it’s possible to stay friends with an ex.

Of course it’s possible, I said, answering the question quickly and with a great deal of confidence. I’m still friends with all my exes. There’s um… er… um… wait…. hold on… there must be one. What about that guy, remember, the one who lived in Simon’s Town?

‘Didn’t he die?’ Another friend piped in. ‘It doesn’t count if they’re dead!’

‘Well, I’m still friends with a lot of my ex’s mothers,’ I said. ‘Does that count? We’re friends on Facebook and we email and phone each other on birthdays and high holidays.’

‘That doesn’t count either!’ The same friend said.

Remind me to remove her from my Christmas card list. There I’ve gone all these years believing I was one of those girls who was mature and worldly enough to be able to remain close friends, or at least amicable with all her exes. It turns out that it doesn’t really work like that in the real world.

The thing about trying to be friends with an ex is that there’s always that temptation to go back. With time and a bit of whisky, the pain and torture of your break up and all the bad memories of the relationship tend to fade a little, and we’re left with mostly the good.

Women (or at least this one) seem to have a bit of a selective memory thing going on. I don’t know if men have it too. I figure woman have it on some basic level to protect our species. Catch most women the day they give birth and they’ll tell you it’s the most scary, horrendous, painful, dangerous experience of their lives, and should be avoided at all costs. Catch the same woman a few years later (she’ll be in my inbox tomorrow if you’re looking for her) and it’s all angels and fairy dust and rainbows and unicorns, and the most fulfilling, meaningful and beautiful thing that’s ever happened to her, and she can’t wait to do it again. We have to be like this, otherwise women would never have more than one child, or would convince other women to never go through childbirth, and the future of the planet would be at risk. I’m sure of it.

It’s this same selective memory thing that tempts us to go back to an ex. Your mind plays tricks on you. You think he wasn’t that bad, was he? It was just bad timing, or maybe I’ve changed, or better yet, maybe he’s changed. You remember how good things were when they were good, and conveniently block out all the snot and trane.

Months after we’d broken up, while we were still naive enough to try and broker some kind of friendship off the fractured remains of our relationship, I found myself considering going back in for a second try with an important ex. Until he told me one of the reasons we couldn’t be together again was because I'm not a pear.

'Of course I'm not a pear,' I said. 'I'm an Aries.'

'Tsk,' he said, clucking his tongue at me in irritation. 'I mean, you're not pear-shaped.'
And then the dam burst and the memories came flooding back. All the reasons why we shouldn’t be together (too many to mention here, this is only a little column after all). And I was immediately eternally grateful for the reminder. I mean what kind of idiot steps on a land mine twice?

Turns out I'm actually quite pleased I'm not pear-shaped. I'd never be able to wear a hat if I had that stalk for a head. And where would I put all my brains and all my boobs?

So my younger, more naive self answers absolutely, most definitely, of course yes, to the question can we still be friends with our exes. But my more mature, experienced, honest self knows the truth. You could, but why would you want to?

A crazy lady writes a crazy book

Self publishing. It can go either way.

My great friend Zwier allerted me to this recently self-published book:

You can buy it online for just $20.

Why you would want to pay to get to know another woman's husband's cock is beyond me, but hey, to each his or her own.

The author's description of the book is as follows:
'Getting To Know My Husband's Cock is a love story in photogrpahs - nudes, landscapes and still lifes - that reveal a journey in self discovery.'

HEY CRAZY LADY! It's called SELF discovery for a reason. Because it's for yourSELF. Just you, nobody else. Not for me, not for my granny, not for my sister nor my uncle. That discovery is just for you alone. Stop sharing.

Okay, no seriously, to be fair. In the promotional video found here, the author says the book isn't as much about her husband's actual cock as it is about the couple's journey in getting to know each other. Oh and they like to be nude a lot. So it is a little about his cock. But also it's a metaphor type of thingy. (thingy, get it, get it? he he he)

Crazy? Mebbe just a leettle bit.

Here are a few spreads from the book:

 Go figure.

Feeling a little businessy

I met Penny Haw by Twitincidence (Twitter coincidence). Or as I like to think of it lucky happenstance (Lappenstance? Sounds like something you get at Teasers.)

She is a journalist, which is very impressive. Journalism is something I once considered doing, but I never thought I'd be good enough at it, so instead I pursued advertising. I think journalism is flippen hard, and you have to get out there and know a lot, and stay very current. When journalists say stuff, it kinda actually has to be true. Well most of the time anyway. Writing fiction is much easier, you get to stay in your pajamas and make up a lot of crap.

So Penny Haw interviewed me, and then wrote a really lovely article which ran yesterday in The Business Day. I've attached it in case you didn't get to see it.

Click to enlarge

I'm so pleased and grateful that they put a picture of my latest novel, This Way Up, in the piece.

Shame, the poor photographer, Trevor Samson had his work cut out for him. I'm not very photogenic you see. I definitely have a face for radio. (Or as one of the guys in the studio where I work said, He has a face for a balaclava. Bwahahahaha.) Besides the natural genetics I'm lacking, there are also certain things models know how to do to make themselves look better in photos and I definitely missed that day at school. 

But I think it all worked out okay in the end.

I feel all businessy now. Maybe tomorrow I should wear a tie. Although it would probably fall in my drink all the time, so bugger that.

Just finished: Nineveh

I just finished this book:

I did that thing where I was stealing minutes from everything else to read it.

I had twenty seven pages left to read when I woke up yesterday morning. So I read it while I made breakfast, I read it while I ate breakfast, and then I read it while I was getting dressed. Swapping the book from my left to my right hand while I threaded my arms through the sleeves of my t-shirt and then my jersey.

So thanks to this book I was a) late for work yesterday, and b) not particularly stylishly dressed.

Needless to say, it's a very compelling story.

(Her other stuff is great too, if you're looking for an author you can really get into.)

You can read a more detailed review of it by Diane Awerbuck, over here on the Books Live Website.

Being desperate to finish reading it eventhough there was somewhere I needed to be reminded me of something that's very important to me:

Books that make you stay up way past your bedtime, books that make you late for work, books that make you dress badly, books that make you laugh out loud, books that make your fingertips go pruney in the bath - those are the kinds of books I not only want to read, but those are the ones I try to write, too.

Happy Tuesday book fans.

It's a gap at the price, I'll take two.

Happy monday. Here's yesterday's Sunday Times column:

A MILLION MILES FROM NORMAL – By Paige Nick
FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS GET ENEMAS

There seems to be a new rage sweeping the land right now. I’m talking about these group deal thingies. A bunch of different companies have sprung up all over the show. Groupon, Zapon, Shopon, Strapon. Some of the deals are actually pretty amazing. I haven’t gone as far as to buy anything myself, yet, but I’ve been known to browse. From what I can gather you sign up and then they deliver whatever special offer on random products and services is so hot right now, directly into your inbox.

I’m a huge fan of the ‘big deal’, and I definitely have ‘it’s a steal at the price, buy two’ syndrome. Who doesn’t? Particularly in this day and age, when times are a little on the tighter side. But somehow my sense is that we might be taking all of this a little too far. Something we, the human race, have been known to do on occasion.

Historically I wouldn’t normally find the need to have four suits dry cleaned for 40% off the usual price, not being the kind of girl who wears suits all that often. But that was one of the deals that caught my eye recently. 40% off is a lot off. I even checked in my closet on the off chance that there were any suits that needed dry cleaning in there, but I don’t think denim counts as ‘a suit’.

We might be getting a little scissor happy, or coupon happy over here. Just because you’re offered 60% off battery acid, doesn’t mean you should buy it, unless of course battery acid is something you find on your shopping list on a regular basis, then bonus for you.

One friend of mine took advantage of a great deal on ‘live blood analysis. Another bought liposuction. She really doesn’t need it, she’s got an ass of steel, but at 68% off it was too good a deal to turn down. Ironically, the liposuction deal was right next to a ‘two pizzas for the price of one’ deal. Perhaps if she bought the one she might need the other.

Just buying something because it’s on sale is an attractive but slippery slope. As my Granny always used to say, you still have to pay for a good deal.

Another deal I came across was for 55% off a colonic hydrotherapy session at a Spa. For those of you who have never had the pleasure, a colonic hydrotherapy session is fancy-speak for an enema. 55% percent, that’s over half off! I’ve never had one myself, but at over half off, I can see the attraction.

However the real craziness came in a little lower down in that email, where they claimed that ‘If this particular deal isn’t for you, perhaps you’d like to give it to a friend as a gift?’ Really? An enema as a gift? I guess there is always that age old problem of what to buy that special person in your life who already has everything? Once you’ve bought them socks, a tie, a Ferrari Cap or a facial, then what do you get them? How about a pipe up the bum to evacuate all their poop? Ahhhh yes, they'll treasure that forever! What a thoughtful gift. The only question is, how on earth do you wrap an enema?

I think while we’re on the subject, it’s important to state here for the record, that good deal or not, if a friend or family member gave me an enema for my birthday, Christmas or Rosh Hashana, that friendship would probably be over pretty soon thereafter. I know it’s the thought that counts, but perhaps next time you could think of a book voucher.

Violence is never the answer, well, maybe sometimes.

The last couple of weeks I've been wondering if all the video games people play are perhaps having a negative effect on us as a society?

What got me thinking about it is this chap who lives in my neighbourhood and has put this note on his car:

Let me transcribe it for you, in case you didn't bring your specs and you don't feel like clicking to enlarge:

ATTENTION CUNT WHO KEEPS STEALING THINGS OFF MY CAR

If I catch you, I will beat your head into this pavement until your face can't be recognised. I will then drag your body behind my car and leave it in the forest to be eaten by rats and insects. Then I will go after your family! I fucking dare you to touch this car again. I will be watching and I will find you.

I love his restraint, I totally would have put an exclamation mark at the end of that!

But seriously, I blame PlayStation, X-box, Wii and Donkey Kong.

Not that I'm much of a gamer myself (I don't think online Backgammon, Scrabble, or Bejewelled Blitz counts as 'gaming'). But I have on occasion, in what I like to fondly recall as my 'wasted youf', been known to play the odd racing car driving game. So I know from first-hand experience that whenever I drive after I've been playing these games, I get the desperate urge to put my foot down flat, drive as fast as I can, and bounce off the pavements, like you can in the games.

You do tend to take the game into life with you a little.

So something tells me this guy might have spent a fair amount of time playing Blood Thirst Six, or Chain Gang Boobs Murder Riot Four, or Desperado Vampire Hunt Nine, or Road Rage Baseball Bat Combat Three, or whatever other game is the shiznit right now. Either that or he watches a lot of slasher flicks.

I mean he isn't simply going to beat the crap out of the thief when he finds him. There is a lot of well-thought through, quite specific, premeditated, violently graphic detail in there.

Not that I blame the dude to be honest, this isn't London a'ight, folks. Looting is not acceptable behaviour.  

So I've been meaning to blog about this guy and his Car Note of Death the whole of last week, but life got in the way (I know, I'm such a slacker) and then I saw this article in my very favourite newspaper; The Sunday Times. It seems they reported on this guy, just like I wanted to. Except they got there first, and they can't say 'cunt' cos they're a newspaper. 

Click to enlarge

Those thieving bastards stole the car battery out of this poor oke's bonnet, for fuck's sake! Who said that was alright?

  

Does anyone out there know this Matt van der Valk? I looked for him on Facebook and Twitter, with no luck. If you follow him, please point me in his direction. I for one would like to follow this guy, If that's what he wants to do to some oke messing with his car, I'd love to hear what he says to those direct marketing sales callers that ring during dinner.

Bet it would be on like Donkey Kong!

Maybe daft isn't so daft after all.

Once upon a time A Daft Scots Lass had a blog.
That's just one of the reasons I like her.
Another is that she visits my blog and comments when the urge strikes her.
A third reason I like her is because when I was trawling around her blog this evening, checking out her life and times, I scrolled upon this little gem:

So fucking classic! Thank you, not so Daft Scots Lass.

Just finished:

I just finished this book:

It's the sweetest book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Basic premise: An eight year old girl discovers that she can taste the mood of the chef in whatever she eats. It's charming, and whimsical and a little on the odd side. I guess some would call this genre 'magic realism', but I'm never really sure.

It's an easy, recommendable read.

What are you reading this week?

Hey, if you're looking for something and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake doesn't quite float your boat, perhaps I can recommend this book:

I've heard it's rather good. Okay, kidding, kidding, that's my latest book, and I thought i'd give it a punt.

I was going to offer you a million dollars as a reward if you go out today and buy this book from any good book store. But then I did the maths and realised that would mean I make a total profit of somewhere in the region of minus $999 995.99c on each sale. Which doesn't make much business sense.

So it looks like you'll have to buy it for the same reason I wrote it; love not money.

Happy Wednesday dudes and dudettes. And happy reading.

Pay off lines for humans

Oi, Oi, or as the French say, Oui, Oui. Howzit? Hope you had a nice column, here's your weekend. No wait, that wasn't what I wanted to say at all. Hope you had a nice weekend, here's your column:

A MILLION MILES FROM NORMAL – By Paige Nick
SMART AS A HORSE AND HUNG LIKE EINSTEIN

So there’s a local dating website that I’ve been known to visit every now and then. I go there for a number of reasons. First of all it's a good place to find funny stuff to write about, being that it's full to the brim of freaks and lunatics. But also, as a single person, I think it's important to keep working out those dating muscles. No, not those muscles you pervert, I mean that it's important to stay in the game, keep your brain fresh, your dating skills sharp. Like a dating ninja.

The first thing you do when you sign up on a site like this is choose a name for yourself. These generally fall into four or five basic categories. The sickening, like ‘Pookie-Pants’ or ‘Cuddle Bunny’, the trying hard to be clever, like ‘Mr Right’, the overly obvious, like ‘George’, the just plain honest, like ‘Divorced Dad’ or the over-promising, like ‘Handsome Dave’.

Once you've settled on your name, you then have to write a short line about yourself to go along with your profile. I suppose it's all about advertising and this is where you need to do a bit of self-promotion. So it’s a bit like giving yourself a pay off line. You know, your own personal 'Just Do It', ‘Yebo Gogo’, or your own 'Saving you time, saving you money, putting you first'.

Now this I can buy into, after all, advertising is what I do for a living, so I totally get how important it is for a product to put its best foot forward, and give people an idea of what it does and how it does it, in just a few short words.

So I decided to surf through a couple of the daters’ ‘pay off lines’ and see how good we are at selling ourselves out there on the meat market. And I wasn’t disappointed. There was the full range, from the inspired, to the bizarre and even the just plain crazy.

My absolute favourite came from a chap whose pay off line is ‘Smart as a horse and hung like Einstein.’  Pretty funny I thought, if he's joking that is. Not so funny if he's describing himself honestly.

I hoped like hell that the guy who wrote; ‘Animal Lover’ was joking too. I’m not so sure this is that kind of website.  

Another interesting one I came across was; ‘Opsoek na Christelike waardes!’ I'm guessing there would be no tequila and wild monkey sex on the first date with him then? Another one read; ‘Just when you thought it was safe to go out again.’ Anyone else out there also wondering if this guy is a serial killer?

But they aren’t all freaks, this one caught my eye: ‘Let’s not discount the possibility of me being the one.’ Cue the Barry White soundtrack, roaring fireplace and scented candles, what a charmer.

Then I decided I’d better size up the competition, so I went to check out what kinds of pay off lines the ladies on the dating website are writing. But if the twenty or thirty girl’s profiles I scrolled through are anything to go by, I think the guys must be better at this pay off line business than we are. Maybe all those years of crafting their pick up lines has given them the edge.

Miss ‘Fourth time lucky?’ had me worried. But not nearly as worried as ‘Classy, spunky lady’. You have to question whether one can be classy and spunky at the same time? And ‘Wie’s jou tannie???’ With three question marks. Clearly this lady really doesn’t know who her tannie is at all. Perhaps she should be on a find your tannie website instead of a find your boyfriend website. And I wasn’t crazy about Miss ‘Ignite me and make me your chariot of fire’ either. You know what they say about boys who play with matches.

But it's easy to be critical, which I discovered quickly enough when I got to work coming up with my own pay off line. Coming up with three or four words that encapsulate your entire personality is way trickier than you think. I even looked at some classic advertising pay off lines to see how the pros do it, thinking that I might be able to nick one. But in the context of a dating website 'They taste so good ‘cos they eat so good' would probably make me sound a little weird, 'It’s not inside it’s onnn top!' feels a little cryptic, and 'Sheer Driving Pleasure' might paint me in a bad light. Maybe I’ll just stick with ‘Dating ninja’.

Gumtree, or as I like to think of it now, Bumtree.

Gumtree is a strange, strange place.

Here's an idea, someone should bring out a book containing all the crazy posts that have ever appeared on Gumtree.

This would certainly be one of them:

Click to enlarge

Gross man! Really, R150 for some used underpants? Serius!

I think I read somewhere that used panties are big in Japan, and you can get them out of a vending machine or something, but that may or may not be true, and probably deserves a whole post of it's own.

Go Bumtree, oops, I mean Gumtree.

What are you reading?

There used to be this great facebook app, called Visual Bookshelf, where word nerds like me could log what you're reading and share with your friends etc.
But they recently went belly up and are no longer. Sad face.

So for now I'm logging books here.

Feel free to let us know what you thought if you've read it too, or what you're reading, or recommending.

I just finished this;

It recently won the Sunday Times prize for Fiction, so I was very keen to read it.

It's quite hectic, about a young guy growing up in a township in Durban. He drops out of school and gets into the insane world of car hijacking.
It reminded me a little of this book which I read last year:

Both coming of age stories, both good reads.

What are you reading?

The Order of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Happy Monday! Well sort of Monday, tomorrow's a public holiday, so it's a little like a mini Friday. Here's yesterday's Sunday Times column, and it's illustrated, hope it brings even the tiniest smidgen of light to your day.

enjoy. x

A MILLION MILES FROM NORMAL – By Paige Nick
THE ORDER OF THE FLYNG SPAGHETTI MONSTER

Well, somebody had crack for breakfast, and it wasn't me. (At least not this time.) A dude named Niko Alm from Austria, recently kicked up a massive stink with his local Department of Home Affairs until they eventually gave him permission to have his driver’s license photo taken while wearing a colander on his head. You know a colander, it's that thing you use in the kitchen to drain your pasta. He said it was for religious reasons.

This is a true story. I read about it in the newspaper. This chap figured that since Jewish men can wear their yarmulkes, and Moslem men can wear their taqiyahs in their driver’s license pictures, that he should be allowed to wear his religious headgear too.

And so he wore a colander. He did this because he is a Pastafarian. Which is like being a Rastafarian, only a lot more ridiculous, and potentially with the same amount of weed. I checked and Pastafarianism is actually a pretty real religion. They worship at The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And celebrate Pastover (which falls over Passover), during which they eat masses of pasta. They also celebrate Ramendan (which happens over Ramadan), when they gorge themselves on Ramen Two Minute noodles.

I know all religions can seem a little odd if they’re not yours, and I’m all for being tolerant of other people’s beliefs, but this one does seem a little on the kooky side.

But let’s not talk about religion, shall we. That always ends in tears. Rather let’s discuss the phenomenon of the driver’s license photo. Has anyone in the history of the world ever thought they looked good in their driver’s license, ID, or passport photo? I bet even David Beckham isn’t crazy about his, and Kate Moss probably thinks hers makes her look a bit like a drug addict.

So you have to wonder about this guy begging to wear a colander on his head. Why would you choose to look any more ridiculous in your driver’s license photograph than you already do? I read in a recent study published in my imagination, that they actually use a specially manufactured kind of film in driver’s license photo cameras. It's designed to make you look awful. The film itself gives you crazy eyes, a strange gray complexion, and a somewhere in-between snarl and fake smile, and the camera literally does add ten pounds. In my ID photos I somehow always manage to look like I spent the night before in a prison cell.

In fact, I always feel a bit offended when the dude at passport control recognizes me from my passport photo. I want to shout at him, ‘What do you mean I can go through? Do you really think I look like that, you bastard! I look nothing like that I'll have you know! The lady who took it had it in for me! And they used that special film that makes you look ugly!’

But I generally try to hold my tongue, contain myself and pass through customs quietly. Nobody wants to start their holiday off with a full body cavity search. Except maybe the guy with the colander on his head.

To infinity and beyond

So I barely ever, hardly never ever blog about advertising. Just to keep things tidy. But we're about to launch a really cool campaign, and I wanted to share.

One of our very clever clients, kulula.com are turning 10 this month and to celebrate we figured out that they've flown over 55 million kilometres in the past ten years. Which is from here to Mars. Which is flippen, fricken, blimming far, if you ask me.

Anyway to celebrate this pretty astonishing event kulula have bought a ton of actual land on Mars. Acres and acres of it, enough to build an airport and a runway, and have some left over to give away to anyone out there who thinks they might like to relocate one day. (Check out the kulula page on Facebook if you want to enter.)

We also shipped in a UFO (an Unusually Freaky Object) we bought from those wonderful folks in the Lunar Nebular Zorxbox Region of Uranus (They were having their annual Lunar Eclipse Sale) which will be making it's way around the country over the next couple of weeks. Beaming people up and probing them where possible.

Here's a sneak peak so you know what to avoid if you don't like being probed, or what to hunt down if you rather enjoy a good probing.

Objects in the mirror may appear light years closer than you think.

right then, so off we go, to infinity and beyond.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

Dogs playing poker

One of my favourite posts so far this year has been this one, on the classic American Gothic painting.

I loved doing the research, finding out about it and writing about it.

So I thought I'd take another classic painting and find out about it.

This, my friends...

...is 'Dogs Playing Poker'.

It was one of a series of sixteen oil paintings, made by C.M. Coolidge in 1908, on commission by Brown & Bigelow, to advertise their cigars.

And Dogs Playing Poker has been reproduced in every imaginable incarnation ever since:

He he he, I love the ones where it's cheating dogs playing poker. Classic.

The more modern ones are also a little crazy:

And some, like this one, are even quite realistic looking:

He, he he, some people have a lot of time on their hands. Not to mention, a lot of dogs.

This version appeared in an episode of The Simpsons:

In fact, it's been such a popular series, it's even sprung a series of hysterical offshoots.

Like Gods Playing Poker:

Love the addition of Elvis as a God in that one.

I wouldn't want to play poker with a bunch of Gods, there'd just be no chance of winning at all, and if by some fluke you did beat one, it would be a punishment of a brutal death by lightning bolt, for sure.

And another favourite off shoot of Dogs Playing Poker - there's 'Serial Killers from Movies Playing Poker':

Which is by Ray Frendon and is available here.

Someone has even tried Cats Playing Poker:

But cats are so aloof, you wouldn't want to play poker with them.

So after all this research, I thought I'd leave you with one quick piece of advice:

If you ever find yourself playing poker with a bunch of dogs, watch your back. Cos you know what they say - you should never trust anyone who can lick their own balls.