letters I will never send, #1

Dear people who post videos of your golden retrievers on YouTube,

Hello! First of all, hearts! You should know that, when I feel sad or nervous or otherwise stressed out, one of my preferred strategies for calming myself down is flipping on a YouTube video of a golden retriever. I particularly appreciate goldens in the snow, but I also often enjoy brown-eyed boys and girls romping in the leaves or diving into the pool.

But there are a few things that we need to talk about.


There is only one song that is acceptable to play in tribute videos to a dead golden retriever. That is "Femme Fatale" by The Velvet Underground. Relatedly, valuable advice for life: music by the Velvet Underground is almost always superior to all music not by the Velvet Underground. Whatever you do, avoid "Hero" by Mariah Carey, a song that is so sappy and awful that I would hesitate to play it for a recently deceased cat. Such videos must unfortunately be watched with the sound off and "Femme Fatale" played on I-Tunes instead.


It is also annoying if you include PowerPoint comments likening your retriever to an angel, or talking about what your golden will be like in heaven. Goldens are deeply intellectual dogs who find such sentimentality to be beneath them. Most of them are intelligent enough to be atheists,though a few do cling Evelyn Waugh style to a kind of ornamental Catholicism. They therefore find your cloying to outmoded dogmas unduly insulting to their memories. Minus still more points for ugly PowerPoint designs or weirdly ornamental fonts. The pictures of the retrievers speak themselves.

For the same reasons, you should also avoid trite quotations from famous people.

Should you follow these simple tips, everyone can more easily enjoy watching videos of golden retrievers.

Xoxo,
Isabel