The Angriest Dog in the World

The Angriest Dog in the World was a comic strip by film director David Lynch which ran from 1983 until 1992.

The strip is introduced with a small caption, often omitted by newspapers:

"The dog who is so angry he cannot move. He cannot eat. He cannot sleep. He can just barely growl. Bound so tightly with tension and anger, he approaches the state of rigor mortis."

Visually each strip is the same. The first three identical panels feature the black dog growling, straining on his chain. He is between a tree on the left and one wall of a house with a window on the right. The fourth panel is the same as well, except it is at night and a circle of light comes from the house's window.

A word balloon appeared in one or more of the panels, indicating speech from a member of one of the house's unseen family, either Bill, Sylvia, Pete, or Billy, Jr. Usually the speech is in the form of an aphorism or a non sequitur. Such sayings included:

• "If everything is real...then nothing is real as well."
• "It doesn't get any better than this."
• "Bill...Who is this San Andreas? I can't believe it's all his fault."
• "The only way you have exceeded my expectations is in weight."
• "Green wood shriks."
• "The psychological origin of the idea of space, or of the necessity for it, is far from being so obvious as it may appear."
• "It must be clear even to the non-mathematician that the things in this world just don't add up to beans."
• "Unfortunately, life contains an unavoidable element of unpredictability."

Many readers admired the strip's absurdity, while others derided it as pretentious and frivolous.