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Friday, May 2
Hand-me-down
Over two years ago, on a Valentine's Day in Munich, I found myself in a pet store trying on collars  with the woman who, unbeknownst to me, would be my wife. To be more precise, it wasn't really a collar, but a choke chain, which I would wear as a collar with the aid of a small padlock.
That was my first locking collar, and I always regretted that it wasn't a tiny bit bigger. It wasn't tight, but it wasn't loose, so it would ride high on my throat, making it challenging to conceal in my vanilla life. Later on we would replace it with a fancier collar, one meant for kinky people and not dogs. That first collar sat in the toy closet, going more or less unused, for many months. Unused, that is, until we decided it would be useful to get a choke chain for our dog Leo. It fits him, as a choke chain, no lock necessary, perfectly. That's my boy. And now no one even thinks to ask why we have a dog bowl up on the top shelf of the coat closet. '; } else { if(stristr($filename,"archive")) { $dir=$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']; $template='_01_archive.html'; $tail=strlen($template); $thisArchive=$filename; //$files=scandir($dir); $dh = opendir($dir); while (false !== ($filename = readdir($dh))) { $files[] = $filename; } sort($files); $earlyarch=""; $laterarch=""; $prevarch=""; $next=0; foreach($files as $file) { if (substr($file,-$tail)==$template) { if ($next==1) { $laterarch=$file; $earlyarch=$prevarch; $next=0; } if ($file==$thisArchive) { $next=1; } else { $prevarch=$file; $earlyarch=$prevarch; } } } $link=''; $divider=''; if(file_exists($earlyarch)) { $link='< Earlier Archive'; $divider=" | "; } if(file_exists($laterarch)) { $link=$link.$divider.'Later Archive >'; } $link=$link.' '; } } echo($link); ?> |