Donut Make My Brown Eyes Blue

There is a term in the mean world of politics: "Yellow-Dog Democat," meaning that the person to whom this adjective is directed will, without fail, vote for the Democrat in any election, no matter who the opponent is, even if the candidate proffered by the Democrats happens to be a yellow dog.

In response, some moderate-to-illiberal Democrats began labeling themselves "Blue-Dog Democrats," meaning that they would be willing to stand in the middle of the spectrum.

Meanwhile, in Russia, there is an actual pack of actually blue dogs roaming around, and while residents of Dzerzhinsk at first feared some bizarre gene coding gone berserk, turning brown dogs blue and other extreme changes of nature, there is a simple explanation, so don't panic.

These poochie dogs were hanging around the old Dzerzhinskoye Orgsteklo cluster of chemical factories. That business went kaputsky in 2015, but no one bothered to clear out what was left behind.

The poor hounds had rolled around in copper sulfate, which, mixed with water, turns things blue. 

“Dogs are running around the area,” said Andrey Mislivets, the bankruptcy manager of Dzerzhinskoye Plexiglas. “Perhaps, in one of the buildings, they found some kind of chemical residue — copper sulfate, for example, and rolled in it.”

I wish all dogs had happy homes to play in instead of abandoned chemical factories.

By the way, the world of music recently lost the great pianist Hargus "Pig" Robbins, who played piano on hundreds of records you've heard over the years, including Crystal Gayle's "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue."

Robbins got that nickname as a child growing up in the Tennessee School For The Blind, where a supervisor knew where to look for him when he was not around: out on a fire escape, "getting dirty as a pig."  He was universally known by that sobriquet by all but Bob Dylan, who found it too disrespectful.

Dylan called on "Mr Robbins" to play on his "Blonde On Blonde" album to get that "Salvation Army band" sound on songs like "Rainy Day Women # 12 and 35."

It's not every day that we can tie Russian dogs to Nashville session piano players, but that's the world we made. Don't be blue about it.