At 8:15 precisely.

The war of wits continues. Yesterday, he got through the gate despite the bicycle lock. Impossible for any dog I’ve ever known. He was very pleased with himself.

Here he is, telling my wife that it’s time to go to bed. And, yes, the time was exactly 8:15 pm.

My wife’s fault clearly. I was doing it right, with a sort of standoffish Scottish bonhomie. Then came the broken arm. Suddenly he got the last bite of whatever she was eating, from tuna subs to Tastycake butterscotch krimpets. And she rubbed his tummy. Now he paws at her for tummy rubs. Scots should never get tummy rubs. We’re too prone to irrational fixations. Why do you think we’re so harsh all the time? Because we’re such soft touches.

Now we have a problem. No way to restrain him anywhere. Except at 8:15 pm.

Thank God for that.

A Ferrari that begs to be driven

Here’s the wonderful news:

A rare 1960s Ferrari convertible sold for a record $27.5 million in a weekend car auction.

The 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4*S NART Spyder’s price was the most paid at auction for the Italian carmaker anywhere in the world and the most for any car bought at a U.S. public sale.

A 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4*S NART Spyder. One of only 10 made, was estimated at $14 million to $17 million in a two-day sale held by RM Auctions in Monterey, California, on Aug. 16-17. The car sold for $27.5 million with fees, the most paid at auction for the Italian carmaker anywhere in the world and the most for any car bought at a U.S. public auction.

“The NART Spyder is a very special car,” the U.K.-based dealer John Collins, one of the underbidders at the RM Auctions event, said in a telephone interview. “They’re so rare. They’re among the most beautiful of all Ferraris. Some of the biggest collectors in the world own one, and Steve McQueen tried to buy this one after he crashed his,” said Collins, of the Talacrest dealership.

Wonder why Steve McQueen wanted another one. Actually, I don’t wonder. He wanted to drive it. But you can’t drive a 27 million dollar car. You put it in a vault. It’s like bronzing Sophia Loren rather than bedding her. A total waste.

The story is presented as some kind of triumph. It just isn’t. I’m not normally in the camp of the 99-percenter hysterics, but this is one time when I am.

Such cars should be experienced, not entombed in sterile museum exhibits by the rich acquisitive old men who can afford to buy them and display them like trophy wives they’re impotent to satisfy physically.

This is not a sudden new subject for me. I remember that the fabled Concours d’Elegance, where all the world’s greatest cars are judged and (sometimes) sold, some years back required that the entered cars be driven in a quasi-race to prove that they were still cars. I remember learning two decades ago that an incredibly high percentage of the original 200 427 Cobras were still intact, having found their way into the hands of owners who knew how to drive such recklessly fast and relatively poor handling monsters without wrecking them. (Based on today’s news, no longer true, I’m sure.) And I remember attending a Bugatti — Hispano Suiza meet some quarter century ago in which the Hispanos were worshipped as works of art while the Bugattis were engaged in a flat-out race, dinged and sliding and determined to win. Yes, the Hispanos were some of the loveliest things I’d ever seen. But the Bugattis smelled like hot Castrol R. Which, to this day, is a smell that intoxicates me more than any other, including even you know. It’s that magical.

[Go ahead. Test it for yourself. Buy a can of Castrol R, which is made from castor beans. No petroleum involved. Heat it up on the stove. Drink it in through your olfactory organs. Then tell me you wouldn’t follow that smell to the last open highway, even if the other was beckoning from the bed.]

I’m not resentful of the rich. I’m tired of the idea that mere money is a complete substitute for passion, skill, learning, esthetic appreciation, and the resolve of the committed to be close to, even intimate with, the entities they love.

It’s a disaster. Not a small one. It’s a diminution of humanity. A Ferrari is not Michelangelo’s David or da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Those are things you can look at. A Ferrari is something you have to feel, hear, steer, shift, smell, and regard the rest of the world from inside on a desperately winding road. You know, like living life.

Something not meant to be bought or sold like stocks.

But maybe that’s just me.

Yeah. I’m cool.

Only posting this because Saturday will be the debut of the Fox Sports Channel. Don’t actually have a lot of hope for that, but I am well and truly done with ESPN. They hired Keith Olbermann. Who does that? Who is so blind bone stupid that it’s somehow okay to sheer off half your total potential audience at a single stroke? Only the kind of maniac who also can’t figure out that national sports coverage shouldn’t consist of obsessive focus on the Yankees and Red Sox, the New York Jets, and A-Rod. As if we all, every one of us, give a crap about those things.

Tell me I’m bad. I’ll tell you I’m still me.

So he got ahead of himself this morning. He growled and then snapped at me. I did what most men my age would do. I belted him right across the face with all my might. Hell of a punch. Lifted him right off his feet.

My wife agreed that it was the right medicine.

You know? He needed it. He’s been better since. Kind of a thank you daddy moment. Now I await your abuse…

Love me, love me not.

Know what? I’m sick of liberals and progressives. I hate them. I HATE them. Not shy about using that word. Robert Whitcomb? I hate YOU. Stinking, smarmy, learned, asshole lefty twits of the world, I really really do hate you.

News? The lefties are all pissed off that there’s a lame site called “Slap Hillary.” Really? Like anyone would care to slap that flat chested little wide hipped Yale hippo who trailed behind her slimy husband to try winning the presidency of the United States.

But. The lefties have been slapping Sarah for years. Which included the porn photo above. That’s okay. Apparently.

Screw them. It doesn’t matter how dirty they want to get. They’ll never win. Basic facts liberals can’t live with. Nobody wants to screw Hillary. Everybody wants to screw Sarah Palin. The difference between mediocrity and beauty.

In honor of my southpaw wife.

The day of days.

I’ll be born in a month or so.

Had to share this. I know the child’s mother. She’ll be having her baby sometime in September.

Why the left is doomed to lose its desperate defense against the banning of “late-term abortion.” People know that those are babies in there, not inconvenient cellular baggage. Fully 65 percent of women oppose abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. And the better the imaging technology gets, the more that number of weeks will get rolled back.

Eventually, the term “progressive” will become synonymous with “nihilist.” Can’t happen soon enough for me.

I’ll show you me, eventually. In the interim I’ll show you celebrities my age.

Bond. Old Bond.

William Fat Petersen.

Almost as smart as Robert. Name of Malkovich.

Colm Meaney. I’m Irish! Sleep with me!

Young women should rest easy. Old guys are just old guys. Maybe not harmless but utterly dismissible. Herewith me:

Older than dirt. I still remember carburetors.

1953. It was a big year. Look it up. No wonder everyone looks old. Of course, not everybody has a portrait in the closet whose job it is to keep getting older while somebody doesn’t. Wish I had that arrangement still. If only I could remember what the deal was…

What a peaceful boy… as of 2 pm today.

This one-dog wrecking crew has destroyed our whole household routine, not to mention much of the household itself.

Most sighthounds like to hang with one another. Why they usually have a room of their own, in this case the two-couch haven called The Breezeway. Our house also had the unique advantage of what we called the “dog room,” a walled-off subsection of the garage where they could both eat and have unobstructed access to their own yard for running and playing in.

Since the missus went back to work after her immobile period, Raebert has destroyed practically everything that stands between him and the upstairs where he now insists he belongs. Here’s the door to the dog room:

Nothing stops me.

We used to be able to close the door to the dog room while leaving the door to the dog yard open, thus preventing the cats from spilling into the dangerous outside world. But Raebert destroyed the dog room altogether, not just the wall into the garage:

Total destruction.

You see, he has to get from the yard, through the dog room, through the garage, into the breezeway, where there is a hefty child’s gate with a complicated latch. And, yes, he solved that latch a long time ago but we put a locking bicycle cable on it and he seemed to accept that he couldn’t defeat it (even though he stole the first key and hid it under the sofa).

Child’s play.

Now he’s got the bit in his teeth, so to speak. He can open the gate in two minutes flat. He refuses to be outside longer than it takes to pee and poop, uh, about two minutes. He can go 12 hours or more without peeing, he can go without eating for days, and he has taken up residence in the upstairs (the only place he will eat), watching over me and waiting for mommy to return. He’s on a mission.

Did I say countermeasures? We tried to shore up the hole in the garage wall. Does it look convincing?

Holes in the wall screened over.

We also installed a baby gate in the upstairs hall, which works great because he has no desire to go downstairs.

They’re so much smarter than me. What am I to do? (uh, ignore the shape of the shadow.)

Battle of wits? More like an ambush…

But we’re hopeful. We’ve asked the FBI and the NSA for their expert help. They always know what to do, right?

P.S. Yes to both questions. He really is gigantic. And we love him to death.

P.P.S. If you prefer the pure positives of deerhounds, here’s a site I recommend heartily.