Mahmood's Den

When I first started blogging, way back in 2001 when blogging was the new new thing, this site used to be called Kick the Dog! What reminded me of that time is my updating some preferences in blip.tv which offers the opportunity to automagically cross post your videos to various services, one of which is the Internet Archive. Just for fun, I plugged in the Den and clicked on the 2001 link just to visit those days… and “Kick the Dog” came up.

I remember a very humourous story behind choosing such a name; apart from it appealing to my weird sense of humour, it reflected a particular dog obedience class in which one of my fellow students was so exasperated with his dog as it was just not doing what it was told that he implored the instructor to tell him what he can do with his dog. I immediately shouted back to him and instructed him to “kick it” and he did! Everybody was absolutely shocked at first, and then the situation descended in complete and uncontrollable laughter. Everyone was just rolling on the ground, some physically, laughing at what the guy did. I was one of those on the ground. I did pity the guy though, he felt so embarrassed, especially that the instructor herself just couldn’t look in his direction without bursting out laughing.

To this day, when I remember that episode I laugh so hard that I inevitably carry on wiping my tears for many hours at the recollection. It is weird the kind of memories one carries within them. This one wasn’t cruel, it was completely unexpected and eventually through subsequent classes, he too started laughing at his own self.

That’s how the name “Kick the Dog” came up, which was preceeded between 1986 – 1995 (I think) by “Stray Cats BBS”. I’m sure some of you remember that one too!