I was at a dog park and in comes this woman with serious photographic equipment. She sneaks several pictures of a kid and his dog and then comes down to ask the mom's "permission" take pictures of the kid and his dog for the newspaper as a guise to obtain their names for the caption. I'm sure she was a legitimate newspaper photographer but she was kind of passive aggressive about how she chose to proceed.

The photographers at that newpaper are getting like that. They are very fond of those pictures of someone enjoying the weekend at the beach or at the park. As innocuous as those pictures are, they've gotten kind of invasive about how they take them. Once I was at the beach in the rain. I was the only person there. I was huddled under a towel like a refugee. Two photographers came to the beach and set up curiously near me. I told myself not to be paranoid. I was musing my beach in the rain thoughts when the female photographer came forward with something in her hands. She looked just as proud as if she had delivered a baby. She said, "Look at the picture he [the male photographer] took of you." There I was huddled under a towel in the rain in an artistically composed photograph. If they expected me to be grateful, they were mistaken. I let them have it.

The dogs parks I go to get more than their share of media attention. Today was about the seventh or eighth time I've seen a member of the media there doing a story. It's usually the same one. I don't want to sound ungrateful. I'll grant you, there is a charm and benevolence to the concept but there must have been a dozen items about the parks in each daily paper. I think that the middle-class, homeowning, newspaper reporters are the perfect demographic to own dogs and love dog parks. Just like they subject us to endless articles about investments and the real estate boom from the privileged perspective of a middle-class professional, they are getting kind of obsessed on dog parks.