The month of September is at my doorstep, but the summer is still trying to suck every last drop of life blood out of us, like a crazed vampire who doesn't know when to stop draining its victim. Almost imperceptibly, the great wheel of the seasons is turning with tantalizing slowness, and the sun continues its languid, snail-like journey towards the south part of the sky. I leave my weekly aerobics class at approximately the same time, 6:50pm, and I can tell it's getting a tiny little bit darker each time. Used to be I would walk out of the gym into the bright sunlight of an early evening, but now the sun is hovering just above the western horizon, sinking a little more each day. The equinox is about three weeks away, and before long I will exit the gym to a sky devoid of sunlight..
I so love autumn because it has always been a time of reflection and contemplation, a time to consider what has been done so far this year, and plan for the long cold winter nights. Everything seems richer and more colorful; the air will soon carry a touch of chilliness in the morning, and there will be a fragrance that speaks of the harvest and coming-of-age, of promises fulfilled and lessons learned. The nighttime sky, always an indication of things to come, shows the Scorpion slinking low across the south toward the faintly glowing western horizon, and gallant, regal Pegasus, the celestial flying horse, making a powerful leap into the eastern sky, taking its rightful place of honor in the starry firmament.
In the coming months, the Scorpion will disappear in the west just as Orion the Hunter throws his leg up over the eastern mountains and hoists himself sideways into the sky, his faithful dog beside him and Lepus the celestial rabbit underneath him. The Scorpion and Orion are locked in a death pursuit, each chasing the other but never catching up. Scorpion wants to sting Orion with its glittering tail, and Orion wants to kill Scorpion with his club. They've been doing this for billions of years and will probably continue for billions more. Such is their fate, both of them hopelessly joined in titanic struggle that will never be resolved. Orion will rise higher in the southern sky until around the winter solstice, when Orion will take his rightful place as Lord of the Sky, glistening in the cold, deep winter night, Master of Heaven and Earth, surveying his kingdom. The Rabbit will still be underneath him, right above Columba the Dove. And very late at night, right around the winter solstice, you will spot the star Canopus, the harbinger of spring, skimming barely above the southern deserts and wildly twinkling like an over-caffeinated, multicolored strobe light.
I have been listening to a lot of music from the 1960s recently. XM satellite radio in my vehicle, along with the music channels on DirecTV, serves up an endless stream of great tunes from that amazing decade. Some of the music still sounds incredibly fresh and new, as if recorded just last week. The music and the vocal harmonies of a lot of the groups were startlingly complex and intricate. Looking back over four decades, I have a new appreciation for the achievements of bands like The Mamas and The Papas, Spanky and Our Gang and the glorious "Jersey Boy" pop of the Four Seasons. Even shallow contrivances like The Cowsills, a musical family whose members ranged from youngsters barely out of the toddler stage to the surprising youthful and hip (for the 60s) mother, recorded an amazing song called "The Rain The Park and Other Things." The Cowsills were a manufactured pop group, a precursor to the ubiquitous "boy bands" of the 80s and 90s, and their short-lived success degenerated into a series of acrimonious lawsuits which ended up tearing the family apart. Besides the reign of brash, revolutionary groups like The Beatles and the Jefferson Airplane, the 60s also saw the dawning of the singer-songwriter era with geniuses like Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell, whose brilliance would continue into the new millennium.
Sure, there was a lot of crap music from that era, something that is inescapable no matter which decade you examine. The "bubblegum" music craze was particularly obnoxious, and unabashedly phony studio groups like "The Archies" and "The 1910 Fruitgum Company" sold millions of annoying records. Reflecting the cultural war at the time, a lot of people snapped up faux-patriotic potboilers like "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by SSgt. Barry Sadler (1966) - and on the other end - whiny, overwrought polemics like "Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire (1965). But all that was counterbalanced by Motown, the early Beatles, and the whole San Francisco psychedelic era, and those are the musical genres with real creativity, and real staying power.
Also central to the 60s sound were the Beach Boys, whose music and sophisticated vocal arrangements are still universally regarded as the best of the best. Brian Wilson's perfectly crafted masterpieces such as "Good Vibrations," "Wouldn't It Be Nice," and the shimmering, transcendent "Surf's Up" are unforgettable. The Boys, along with lesser lights such as Jan and Dean, created the entire California youth scene, an eternal playground full of fast cars, surfing and beautiful girls in bikinis frolicking on a golden beach in an endless summer (recently given a garish, playfully hallucinogenic update by Katy Perry in her "California Gurls" video). As someone just entering their teenage years, I was completely captivated by this perfect vision of a happy, carefree world drenched in lemon-yellow sunlight where you didn't have to work, and the biggest problem you had to worry about was catching the perfect wave. Growing up as I did in a gritty steel-mill town near Pittsburgh, life could get oppressively dull and dreary. The nearest body of water was the dirty Allegheny river which absent-mindedly meandered nearby, definitely not conducive to surfing. The "beach" (derisively called the "Polish Riviera") consisted of a tiny strip of land on the other side of the river made up of smooth, round river rock, which was incredibly uncomfortable to walk or lay on. Wintertime could be long, harsh and very depressing, often not seeing the sun for two weeks at a time, the trees devoid of green leaves, and the world locked in a frigid grip of icy, frozen ground and heavy, leaden skies. But gods help me, that was my home, and I loved it. Truth be told, sometimes I miss those incredibly dismal, cheerless winter days.
When conditions outside become difficult or unpleasant, either emotionally or because of the weather, the natural urge is to turn inward for solace. Whether it's 10 or 110 degrees outside, it's the same thing, two sides of the same coin. Memories are important stepping-stones back to a world with which you are intimately familiar, and that can be a very comforting thing. It's endlessly fascinating to me how a song or a piece of music can evoke such rich, detailed memories of who you were and what you were doing when you first heard it. I can remember all the words to songs I have not heard in 40 years, yet I can't remember what I did last week. Funny how such seemingly trivial things make such an enormous impression on you. Memories are funny, precious and remarkable milestones on the journey of your life.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
My Arizona-versary
Today is my Arizona anniversary, the "Arizona-versary" of the title. Nineteen years ago today, I completed my journey to Phoenix and officially took up residence in Arizona.
I still remember that day, July 31st, 1993. It was a Saturday, and I woke up in a Palm Springs motel with my two cats at the time, and left early for the 4-hour drive east to Phoenix.
It was a warm morning, and the sun already felt hot as it began its climb up from behind the distant mountains. As I left the Coachella valley for the open desert the landscape spread out in all directions, a seemingly-endless vista of burnt, sun-blasted earth in innumerable shades of black, brown, gray and beige, dotted with short, squat, desiccated shrubs and tall, stark saguaro cacti, stuck with their arms held up to the sun, as if begging for mercy that would only come in the rare years when we would have a wet, rainy springtime. Off in the distance I could sometimes see a lone hawk or eagle, doing pirouettes in the sky as it expertly rode the updrafts and currents, spinning higher and higher in the empty azure firmament, searching for a bit of sustenance in this harsh, unyielding and unforgiving world.
The land flattened out into a broad plain as I approached the California-Arizona border and the Colorado river valley. My entry to my new home state was marked only with a large sign on the side of the road, bidding me Welcome to Arizona and showing a cactus wren sitting in a saguaro blossom. Almost on cue, the craggy mountains and rough, rocky hills started up again, and would remain constant fixtures for the rest of the ride. Interstate 10 took me through Quartzite, a quirky, haphazard and confused jumble of a desert town, where double-wide trailers, recreational vehicles, and restaurants with early-bird dinner specials hold sway. Quartzite is one of those surreal deep-desert outposts, teetering on the edge of reality, where you could come and blend into the desert and no one would ever hear from you again. I was to learn that Arizona is full of such places - places where humans could turn into ghosts, and vice versa.
Two hours later I arrived in Phoenix and got the keys to my new apartment. I brought the cats in and let them out of their carriers to explore their new home, and moved in the clothing and furnishings I was able to cram into my car. The bulk of my furniture was still on the moving van, in transit from Burlingame, CA, and would not arrive for another 5 days. I slept on an air mattress and sat on blankets and towels. In spite of the forced austerity, it felt like home, and the cats and I were happy.
The next day, Sunday August 1st 1993, was HOT. The high temperature was 117 degrees, something I had not even dreamed of, let alone experienced. I walked around a little bit in the morning when it wasn't that bad, but very soon a stifling, claustrophobic stillness enveloped everything, and even the buzzing of the cicadas in the palo verde trees became quieter. I retreated to my bedroom and laid on the air mattress, listening to the faint cooing of the native doves outside.
As I start my 20th year of living here, I think about the fact that I have spent nearly a third of my entire life in Phoenix. Arizona is a very beautiful, diverse state, and about the only thing we are missing is the beach and the waterfront, although for the braver of those among us, Rocky Point (Puerto Penasco) in Mexico has the oceanfront. You can find mountains and cool fragrant pine forests in the north, rolling mountains and ski resorts in the east, the funkiness and rustic charm of Tucson in the south and Nogales on the Mexican border, and the bizarre surrealism of the western deserts, where the land cannot make up its mind whether it wants to be Arizona or California and keeps switching back and forth.
We have the astonishing national treasure of the Grand Canyon, truly a wonder of the world, and the turquoise-and-red-rock spiritual theme park that is Sedona. There is also Meteor Crater, a gigantic, mile-wide hole in the ground about 40 miles east of Flagstaff, blasted out by a huge iron-nickel meteor about 75,000 years ago. It is an amazing site and worth seeing. It's even more amazing if you see if outside the window of a jetliner:
So many interesting things to see and do, so many charming little places to visit, like Jerome, Flagstaff and Tubac. But there is a downside to living here, and that revolves around the political climate here.
Unfortunately Arizona is a place of extreme bigotry and intolerance. There is prejudice everywhere, against Mexican immigrants, against Native Americans, against women, against gay people, against people who practice non-Christian religions or don't believe at all. As is shamefully typical among extreme conservatives, if you are not a white, Anglo-Saxon, heterosexual male, you are looked down on as being different and therefore, somehow flawed.
The state government on all levels is a total joke, rife with corrupt, hate-filled idiots and bigots who are re-elected time after time again by an electorate too stupid or uninterested to care. This is an election year, and the local television stations show political ads over and over again ad nauseum, mostly pertaining to a senate race between a pudgy ginger asshole named Wil Cardon and a slimy-slick snake-oil salesman aptly named Jeff Flake. Both are falling over each other trying to lay claim to the title of Most Conservative candidate, they each accuse the other of doing the bidding of the Antichrist himself, Barack Obama. In a lot of places dragging the president's name through the muck of a penny-ante pissing contest like that would be regarded as extremely vulgar and classless, but here in Arizona, nothing could be more normal or acceptable. Or expected.
Old habits die hard here in AZ, and that innate conservatism is reflected in the voting booth. Back in 2010 I was a poll worker for the midterm elections and was assisting an elderly woman in voting. She was confined to a wheelchair and just getting around was a huge effort, but she proudly told me she was in her early 90s and has voted in every single election. I thought that was wonderful until I watched her fill in her ballot, and she just went down the list of candidates and voted for whoever was a Republican. She had no idea who she was voting for; she could be voting for Adolf Hitler or Charles Manson, but she only needed to know they were Republican. I can't help thinking that blind, knee-jerk voting like that was the last thing the Founding Fathers intended when they created this democracy.
With clueless, indiscriminate voters like that, it is no wonder that when you're elected to public office here and you're a Republican, you've got a job for life and don't have to do another single thing again if you don't want to. This predictable, party-line voting means the dumbest, most bigoted and most loathsome assholes in the state become Republicans and get sent to the state legislature and to Congress to push their extreme-right agendas. The state legislature in particular is overloaded with fat old Nazi sympathizers and hate-filled fundamentalist Christians. It's a little disturbing that if you're a fundamentalist Christian, man or woman, and you're only 30 years old, you look old and mean and crotchety like you're in your 80s. Hatefulness of that magnitude makes you old and ugly before your time.
There's an old adage that goes something along the lines of, if you know someone who is crazy, quirky, nonconformist and a little off-center and they mysteriously disappear, eventually they will turn up in San Francisco. Likewise, if you know someone who's bigoted, intolerant, mean-spirited, uneducated and filled with bile and they too disappear, they will eventually turn up in Arizona. And probably in the state legislature.
I still remember that day, July 31st, 1993. It was a Saturday, and I woke up in a Palm Springs motel with my two cats at the time, and left early for the 4-hour drive east to Phoenix.
It was a warm morning, and the sun already felt hot as it began its climb up from behind the distant mountains. As I left the Coachella valley for the open desert the landscape spread out in all directions, a seemingly-endless vista of burnt, sun-blasted earth in innumerable shades of black, brown, gray and beige, dotted with short, squat, desiccated shrubs and tall, stark saguaro cacti, stuck with their arms held up to the sun, as if begging for mercy that would only come in the rare years when we would have a wet, rainy springtime. Off in the distance I could sometimes see a lone hawk or eagle, doing pirouettes in the sky as it expertly rode the updrafts and currents, spinning higher and higher in the empty azure firmament, searching for a bit of sustenance in this harsh, unyielding and unforgiving world.
The land flattened out into a broad plain as I approached the California-Arizona border and the Colorado river valley. My entry to my new home state was marked only with a large sign on the side of the road, bidding me Welcome to Arizona and showing a cactus wren sitting in a saguaro blossom. Almost on cue, the craggy mountains and rough, rocky hills started up again, and would remain constant fixtures for the rest of the ride. Interstate 10 took me through Quartzite, a quirky, haphazard and confused jumble of a desert town, where double-wide trailers, recreational vehicles, and restaurants with early-bird dinner specials hold sway. Quartzite is one of those surreal deep-desert outposts, teetering on the edge of reality, where you could come and blend into the desert and no one would ever hear from you again. I was to learn that Arizona is full of such places - places where humans could turn into ghosts, and vice versa.
Two hours later I arrived in Phoenix and got the keys to my new apartment. I brought the cats in and let them out of their carriers to explore their new home, and moved in the clothing and furnishings I was able to cram into my car. The bulk of my furniture was still on the moving van, in transit from Burlingame, CA, and would not arrive for another 5 days. I slept on an air mattress and sat on blankets and towels. In spite of the forced austerity, it felt like home, and the cats and I were happy.
The next day, Sunday August 1st 1993, was HOT. The high temperature was 117 degrees, something I had not even dreamed of, let alone experienced. I walked around a little bit in the morning when it wasn't that bad, but very soon a stifling, claustrophobic stillness enveloped everything, and even the buzzing of the cicadas in the palo verde trees became quieter. I retreated to my bedroom and laid on the air mattress, listening to the faint cooing of the native doves outside.
As I start my 20th year of living here, I think about the fact that I have spent nearly a third of my entire life in Phoenix. Arizona is a very beautiful, diverse state, and about the only thing we are missing is the beach and the waterfront, although for the braver of those among us, Rocky Point (Puerto Penasco) in Mexico has the oceanfront. You can find mountains and cool fragrant pine forests in the north, rolling mountains and ski resorts in the east, the funkiness and rustic charm of Tucson in the south and Nogales on the Mexican border, and the bizarre surrealism of the western deserts, where the land cannot make up its mind whether it wants to be Arizona or California and keeps switching back and forth.
We have the astonishing national treasure of the Grand Canyon, truly a wonder of the world, and the turquoise-and-red-rock spiritual theme park that is Sedona. There is also Meteor Crater, a gigantic, mile-wide hole in the ground about 40 miles east of Flagstaff, blasted out by a huge iron-nickel meteor about 75,000 years ago. It is an amazing site and worth seeing. It's even more amazing if you see if outside the window of a jetliner:
Unfortunately Arizona is a place of extreme bigotry and intolerance. There is prejudice everywhere, against Mexican immigrants, against Native Americans, against women, against gay people, against people who practice non-Christian religions or don't believe at all. As is shamefully typical among extreme conservatives, if you are not a white, Anglo-Saxon, heterosexual male, you are looked down on as being different and therefore, somehow flawed.
The state government on all levels is a total joke, rife with corrupt, hate-filled idiots and bigots who are re-elected time after time again by an electorate too stupid or uninterested to care. This is an election year, and the local television stations show political ads over and over again ad nauseum, mostly pertaining to a senate race between a pudgy ginger asshole named Wil Cardon and a slimy-slick snake-oil salesman aptly named Jeff Flake. Both are falling over each other trying to lay claim to the title of Most Conservative candidate, they each accuse the other of doing the bidding of the Antichrist himself, Barack Obama. In a lot of places dragging the president's name through the muck of a penny-ante pissing contest like that would be regarded as extremely vulgar and classless, but here in Arizona, nothing could be more normal or acceptable. Or expected.
Old habits die hard here in AZ, and that innate conservatism is reflected in the voting booth. Back in 2010 I was a poll worker for the midterm elections and was assisting an elderly woman in voting. She was confined to a wheelchair and just getting around was a huge effort, but she proudly told me she was in her early 90s and has voted in every single election. I thought that was wonderful until I watched her fill in her ballot, and she just went down the list of candidates and voted for whoever was a Republican. She had no idea who she was voting for; she could be voting for Adolf Hitler or Charles Manson, but she only needed to know they were Republican. I can't help thinking that blind, knee-jerk voting like that was the last thing the Founding Fathers intended when they created this democracy.
With clueless, indiscriminate voters like that, it is no wonder that when you're elected to public office here and you're a Republican, you've got a job for life and don't have to do another single thing again if you don't want to. This predictable, party-line voting means the dumbest, most bigoted and most loathsome assholes in the state become Republicans and get sent to the state legislature and to Congress to push their extreme-right agendas. The state legislature in particular is overloaded with fat old Nazi sympathizers and hate-filled fundamentalist Christians. It's a little disturbing that if you're a fundamentalist Christian, man or woman, and you're only 30 years old, you look old and mean and crotchety like you're in your 80s. Hatefulness of that magnitude makes you old and ugly before your time.
There's an old adage that goes something along the lines of, if you know someone who is crazy, quirky, nonconformist and a little off-center and they mysteriously disappear, eventually they will turn up in San Francisco. Likewise, if you know someone who's bigoted, intolerant, mean-spirited, uneducated and filled with bile and they too disappear, they will eventually turn up in Arizona. And probably in the state legislature.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Things Not To Do
It seems the more you work in animal welfare and rescue, the more love and admiration you have for animals and the more loathing and disgust you develop for human beings.
Humans are constantly trying to outdo themselves when it comes to idiotic, mindless and cruel behavior, and are continually resetting the bar for stupidity in the world. Just when you think you've seen the absolute worst when it comes to ignorance and thoughtless behavior, someone does something which takes your breath away in its stunning depravity.
It is astonishing to me how many profoundly stupid people there are in the world - stupidity matched only by cowardice and the propensity for constant lying. I can't understand how these brain-dead dimwits even make it through the world for a single day. You'd think social darwinism would take over and the really stupid people in this world would gradually become extinct, but somehow, they keep reproducing and spreading their caustic, damaged genes far and wide. Thus will the earth end - not in a blinding nuclear detonation or a disease pandemic or collision with an asteroid, but by the ignorant and stupid taking over the world and turning it into a gigantic cesspit. For a preview of this, one needs only to examine the U.S. House of Representatives and the Republican party, where the truly bigoted, ignorant, racist and uneducated have taken over.
Sadly, so many of these mentally deficient tools decide it's their right to have children and pets. Having children when you're not intellectually equipped to care for a goldfish is certainly one great failing of evolution. Maybe it's a throwback to medieval times when you needed lots of people being generated to fight wars and work as slaves and replace those lost to disease. Maybe you needed people as cannon fodder back in the 1400s with the Black Plague and all, but they are no longer needed in a world of dwindling resources and exploding population.
Having pets when you're an idiot is even more sad, since the animals have no way to stand up for themselves and are always the victims of the evilness and mendacity of their owners. Without exception, it's the animals who suffer for the ignorance of their worthless, irresponsible owners, who create horrific messes for other people to clean up and then just walk away like nothing happened.
Here are a couple of things not to do, because when I take over the world - and trust me, that will happen someday - actions such as these will be dealt with in the harshest possible manner. The world is forewarned.
1) If you go to a pet store and the dimwitted, pimply-faced, minimum-wage clerk sells you two rabbits and swears they are the same gender, you should not be surprised when one day you wake up and find a litter of baby rabbits. This is definitely the fault of the idiot store clerk, but when you call us up and say you have two or three litters of babies you need us to take, then you get to have the word STUPID branded into your forehead. After the first litter, anyone with more than two working brain cells would have separated the rabbits and gotten the male neutered, to prevent any future litters. If you don't, then you're the cause of the problem, not the solution.
2) I realize it's asking way too much, but at least try to have a tiny amount of courage and integrity and say you don't want to keep your rabbits any more, rather than make stupid-shit excuses that your wife and son have developed allergies to the rabbits AFTER FOUR YEARS. "Allergies" is the most ridiculously over-used excuse by dickheads who find it inconvenient to care for their pets any more. People think they can just play the "allergy" card and everything is okay. Little do they know that claiming "allergy" after having an animal for four years is just like wearing a big sign around their fat neck saying, "I AM AN IDIOTIC LYING COWARD!"
3) Don't send me an email that says your son has a rabbit but he doesn't want it anymore and a teacher at his school said she would take it and give it a good home, but your stupid retarded kid "forgot" to give the rabbit to the teacher and now school is out for the summer and you need someone to take the rabbit. If the rabbit potentially had a good home lined up but lost it because your godforsaken dope of a kid was too busy failing at every single thing he does in life, then keep the rabbit and get rid of your pinheaded little bastard. It will work out much better in the long run.
4) When you surrender your rabbit because you are "too busy" or "allergic" or you don't want to pay veterinary bills or you're too damned lazy to provide even basic care or blah blah blah, don't come to me with tears in your eyes and tell me you love the bunny so much and it hurts you so to have to give him up. NEWS FLASH: No one has a gun to your head, and giving up your animal is YOUR CHOICE. If you weren't such a miserable, lousy excuse for a human being you'd understand that having any kind of animal requires work and care and a pet is a lifetime commitment. If you're too lazy to do the work or too stupid to understand the commitment, DON'T GET THE ANIMAL in the first place! How fucking hard is that to understand? Don't tell me you love your rabbit because the two-inch-long toenails and the fact that it's obese tells me otherwise. And above all don't come to me looking for sympathy or a shoulder to cry on because I'm not the least bit interested in making you feel any better about yourself or your heartless, selfish decisions. Just keep in mind that it's taking every bit of self-control I have to not kick all of your teeth out of your head.
5) Don't get testy and irate with me when you call up and say you found an injured rabbit on your front step and won't I just drop everything I'm doing and drive all the way out to West Bumfuck, Arizona and do something with it? I gave you a reasonable option to get the rabbit the care and medical attention it needs at no cost to you, but you didn't find it acceptable because it requires a little bit of "effort" on your part. You're a disgusting pig if you expect someone to drive all the way out to your filthy toilet of a home in some remote desert landfill and take the problem off your hands while you sit on your fat bloated ass watching "The Price Is Right."
You're probably thinking, "Whoa, Steve-o, bitter much?" Ya think? Do I sound like I'm way over being fed up with the unending parade of assholes and dirtbags that come my way and the horrific, ignorant and selfish things they do to perfectly wonderful, innocent animals? Do I sound like I'm completely done with having meth-addicted scumbags lie to my face in a vain attempt deflect any responsibility for their heinous actions? Do I sound like it's getting significantly harder each and every day to even pretend to put up with the tsunami of trailer-trash, low-class human detritus that infects this planet like a virulent cancer? The only thing that keeps me going is that all the bad stuff is counterbalanced to some extent by the truly good, unselfish and caring people you meet, fighting the good fight along with you, mourning the innocents who have lived short, brutal lives filled with agony and fear, and cherishing every triumph like it was a precious jewel.
The more you work in animal welfare and rescue, the more you hate and detest human beings, and the more you believe in angels.
Humans are constantly trying to outdo themselves when it comes to idiotic, mindless and cruel behavior, and are continually resetting the bar for stupidity in the world. Just when you think you've seen the absolute worst when it comes to ignorance and thoughtless behavior, someone does something which takes your breath away in its stunning depravity.
It is astonishing to me how many profoundly stupid people there are in the world - stupidity matched only by cowardice and the propensity for constant lying. I can't understand how these brain-dead dimwits even make it through the world for a single day. You'd think social darwinism would take over and the really stupid people in this world would gradually become extinct, but somehow, they keep reproducing and spreading their caustic, damaged genes far and wide. Thus will the earth end - not in a blinding nuclear detonation or a disease pandemic or collision with an asteroid, but by the ignorant and stupid taking over the world and turning it into a gigantic cesspit. For a preview of this, one needs only to examine the U.S. House of Representatives and the Republican party, where the truly bigoted, ignorant, racist and uneducated have taken over.
Sadly, so many of these mentally deficient tools decide it's their right to have children and pets. Having children when you're not intellectually equipped to care for a goldfish is certainly one great failing of evolution. Maybe it's a throwback to medieval times when you needed lots of people being generated to fight wars and work as slaves and replace those lost to disease. Maybe you needed people as cannon fodder back in the 1400s with the Black Plague and all, but they are no longer needed in a world of dwindling resources and exploding population.
Having pets when you're an idiot is even more sad, since the animals have no way to stand up for themselves and are always the victims of the evilness and mendacity of their owners. Without exception, it's the animals who suffer for the ignorance of their worthless, irresponsible owners, who create horrific messes for other people to clean up and then just walk away like nothing happened.
Here are a couple of things not to do, because when I take over the world - and trust me, that will happen someday - actions such as these will be dealt with in the harshest possible manner. The world is forewarned.
1) If you go to a pet store and the dimwitted, pimply-faced, minimum-wage clerk sells you two rabbits and swears they are the same gender, you should not be surprised when one day you wake up and find a litter of baby rabbits. This is definitely the fault of the idiot store clerk, but when you call us up and say you have two or three litters of babies you need us to take, then you get to have the word STUPID branded into your forehead. After the first litter, anyone with more than two working brain cells would have separated the rabbits and gotten the male neutered, to prevent any future litters. If you don't, then you're the cause of the problem, not the solution.
2) I realize it's asking way too much, but at least try to have a tiny amount of courage and integrity and say you don't want to keep your rabbits any more, rather than make stupid-shit excuses that your wife and son have developed allergies to the rabbits AFTER FOUR YEARS. "Allergies" is the most ridiculously over-used excuse by dickheads who find it inconvenient to care for their pets any more. People think they can just play the "allergy" card and everything is okay. Little do they know that claiming "allergy" after having an animal for four years is just like wearing a big sign around their fat neck saying, "I AM AN IDIOTIC LYING COWARD!"
3) Don't send me an email that says your son has a rabbit but he doesn't want it anymore and a teacher at his school said she would take it and give it a good home, but your stupid retarded kid "forgot" to give the rabbit to the teacher and now school is out for the summer and you need someone to take the rabbit. If the rabbit potentially had a good home lined up but lost it because your godforsaken dope of a kid was too busy failing at every single thing he does in life, then keep the rabbit and get rid of your pinheaded little bastard. It will work out much better in the long run.
4) When you surrender your rabbit because you are "too busy" or "allergic" or you don't want to pay veterinary bills or you're too damned lazy to provide even basic care or blah blah blah, don't come to me with tears in your eyes and tell me you love the bunny so much and it hurts you so to have to give him up. NEWS FLASH: No one has a gun to your head, and giving up your animal is YOUR CHOICE. If you weren't such a miserable, lousy excuse for a human being you'd understand that having any kind of animal requires work and care and a pet is a lifetime commitment. If you're too lazy to do the work or too stupid to understand the commitment, DON'T GET THE ANIMAL in the first place! How fucking hard is that to understand? Don't tell me you love your rabbit because the two-inch-long toenails and the fact that it's obese tells me otherwise. And above all don't come to me looking for sympathy or a shoulder to cry on because I'm not the least bit interested in making you feel any better about yourself or your heartless, selfish decisions. Just keep in mind that it's taking every bit of self-control I have to not kick all of your teeth out of your head.
5) Don't get testy and irate with me when you call up and say you found an injured rabbit on your front step and won't I just drop everything I'm doing and drive all the way out to West Bumfuck, Arizona and do something with it? I gave you a reasonable option to get the rabbit the care and medical attention it needs at no cost to you, but you didn't find it acceptable because it requires a little bit of "effort" on your part. You're a disgusting pig if you expect someone to drive all the way out to your filthy toilet of a home in some remote desert landfill and take the problem off your hands while you sit on your fat bloated ass watching "The Price Is Right."
You're probably thinking, "Whoa, Steve-o, bitter much?" Ya think? Do I sound like I'm way over being fed up with the unending parade of assholes and dirtbags that come my way and the horrific, ignorant and selfish things they do to perfectly wonderful, innocent animals? Do I sound like I'm completely done with having meth-addicted scumbags lie to my face in a vain attempt deflect any responsibility for their heinous actions? Do I sound like it's getting significantly harder each and every day to even pretend to put up with the tsunami of trailer-trash, low-class human detritus that infects this planet like a virulent cancer? The only thing that keeps me going is that all the bad stuff is counterbalanced to some extent by the truly good, unselfish and caring people you meet, fighting the good fight along with you, mourning the innocents who have lived short, brutal lives filled with agony and fear, and cherishing every triumph like it was a precious jewel.
The more you work in animal welfare and rescue, the more you hate and detest human beings, and the more you believe in angels.
Friday, July 13, 2012
My Day In Hell
It's time to gather the kiddies and the old people and the pets around the computer monitor, and settle in for a tale of nearly unparalleled awfulness and tribulation. Yesterday was probably one of the worst days I've ever had to get through, and I'm still reeling from the head-spinning shock. I'll keep the ugly details down to a minimum, since there is so much to slog through, but for now, suffice to say that day was a constant, dizzying stream of the truly wonderful and the truly awful. So pour yourself a big ol' glass of battery acid, because it was definitely "one of those days."
Actually things started to get weird the previous day, Wednesday. It started with an abandoned rabbit call at a run-down apartment building in north Phoenix. It seems that some tenants moved out in the middle of the night and left their two rabbits to fend for themselves on a second-floor patio. I'm not going to start on the kind of vile human detritus that would do that to a couple of rabbits they had as pets. I guess for some people it's impossible to form an emotional bond with anything, and that is probably the worst punishment anyone could endure, living life without love and caring for anything other than your own worthless piece-of-shit existence. Anyway, the people who called had no idea what to do and had no means of transporting them to the Humane Society, where they could be cared for. So I said I would run a taxi service and take them. The two bunnies were youngsters, one black and the other black and white, and were extremely friendly and sweet. How someone could turn their backs on them and walk away without any concern for their welfare is so far beyond my comprehension I have no words.
After that was done, I got a call from one of our foster caregivers, Nancy, who was fostering Tilly and her four babies for Brambley Hedge. It seems her home's air conditioning went out, something you definitely DON'T WANT to happen in Phoenix in July, and I had to get Tilly and her brood out. I went to pick them up, and I also took in her 8-week-old kitten she is fostering. The kitten is black with gold and green eyes, and just a bundle of limitless energy and play. Little Krazy Kat thinks my pet doves are really fascinatng and particular my dove Lily, who has free range in the house. Kitteh thinks Lily is the Best Thing Ever. I haven't had a kitten in my house for a very long time and I had almost forgotten how much fun they can be. Except when they wake up at 4am and won't stop meowing. More on that later.
Late that evening around 11pm, when I was getting ready for bed, a monsoon storm kicked in outside and the rain started coming down and the wind started howling. Monsoon storms can be violent and unpredictable, and this one was a doozy, with loud, crashing thunder and extreme lightning. I was watching it out the front window when an enormous blast of lightning struck. The entire sky turned a brilliant, emerald green for a split second, something I had never seen before, and it hit near a utility pole on the other side of my back fence, causing a power transformer to blow up. There was a really loud explosion, and the entire block was plunged into blackness. Losing all power is also something that you NEVER EVER want to deal with in the middle of summer. When that happened, the first words out of my mouth were, "I am SO screwed." I had no idea how true that would be.
So here I am in the sweltering darkness, unable to do much of anything. I did go around and made sure the rabbits and the kitten were secured, and just had to wait it out. I called the local electric company and they gave a restoration estimate of 3am. It was too hot to stay in bed, so I tried laying on the ceramic tile floor in my bedroom. It was the only way to stay cool, but sleep was impossible. Around 1am the houses across the street got power back, but my side of the street is on a separate electrical grid, and we stayed in darkness. Turns out, getting power back early wouldn't have made a bit of difference.
Three A.M. came around with no change, so I called the electric company and now they said 5am restoration. Great, I thought, but really there was no choice. I couldn't sleep and was starting to get headaches, backaches and leg cramps. Bitch whine moan, I know, but you try sleeping on a hard floor for five hours and see how you feel.
Around 4am Kitteh woke up and did not know where she was, and started a constant meowing which continued until 7am. I was starting to think I had died and gone to hell at some point. Morning also brought a realization that my recycling bin, which I had placed out by the street for Thursday collection, had been knocked over and my trash had been blown up and down the whole street.
It began to get light outside and this long, horrendous night was coming to an end, but not before I noticed that the strong winds had ripped one of my garage doors nearly entirely off. While I was fixing that, power was finally restored at 7:15am, and I thought I might be home free. But when I turned on the air conditioning - nothing. It wouldn't start, almost like it had no power. I ran back and forth desperately from the side of the house where the A/C unit was to my back patio where the circuit breakers were and could find nothing wrong. I began to panic since I had over 20 rabbits in my house and the temperature was only going to go up from that point, and without a doubt my worst nightmare is having lots of bunnies in the house and no air conditioning.
I checked my land line phone and it too, was dead, no dial tone, just silence. I thought well, due to the violent storm maybe there was a phone outage. My cell phone still worked and I ended up calling BHRR friend and supporter Galen Boal, who runs an air conditioning repair business, and he very graciously came over at 8am and fixed my A/C and got it running. He said he did it for the bunnies and would take no payment. I can't express how thankful I am to Galen for his willingness to help and the donation of his time and expertise to keep the bunnies (and me) comfortable and cool.
So, with the A/C blasting lovely cool air throughout the house, I thought well, I may be out of the woods NOW. Oh, that would hardly be the case...
I went to my desktop computer and turned it on to log in and check email, and the flat screen monitor would not turn on. After a bit of checking I determine the power supply transformer was dead. How odd, I thought. So I went to my laptop but could not get to the Internet. After a lot more checking I discovered that my wireless network and my broadband router were both fried. Kaput. Screwed. I realized another of my nightmares had come true - a power surge.
When the lightning hit last night, it created a massive electromagnetic field for a split second. Most of my electronic equipment runs on some sort of transformer, and since transformers are mostly big coils of copper wire, a current burst was induced and stuff got fried. In fact that's what was wrong with my air conditioning, a 24-volt transformer in the main unit got toasted. Luckily it was easily replaced, but my other equipment was out of luck. Also luckily my HDTV, refrigerator and other big-ticket electronics were surge-protected, but I still lost a lot of electrical components, and I am still finding things that were destroyed by the surge. Even the dimmer switch on the overhead light above my kitchen table was ruined. A dimmer switch? Really?
In the midst of all this I still had to pick up a bunny coming to our shelter from the Humane Society of Yuma at 11am. A little gray Holland Lop, it had been kept in a cage with another, unneutered male rabbit who attacked and beat up the smaller rabbit without mercy. Their idiot owner finally wised up and separated them, and dumped the smaller injured bunny off at the Humane Society, and from there to us. Poor little guy, named Giblet, has numerous scars and bite marks all over his head and body, and some big lumpy scar tissue around his eye, but somehow, almost magically, Giblet is still very sweet, friendly and trusting. It never fails to amaze me how resilient and accepting rabbits are to even the most horrendous, painful treatments. His photo is below.
Later that afternoon my trusty laptop computer decided it was a good day to die, and did just that. I got a dreaded Blue Screen of Death and then it would not boot up. This laptop was at least 5 years old and pretty much had my life on it. Luckily I did a major data backup last week when it was starting to act up, but I didn't expect it to die. I think the hard drive is shot. I definitely have gotten my money's worth from that computer, using it nearly every day for hours and hours, but still, I am going to lose so much stuff in terms of pictures and documents, it is so not fair. It's in the repair shop right now and may there's something that can be done to save it, but I am not optimistic. Damn.
By early evening I had just about had it. I was running on adrenaline from no sleep the night before, and it was like being wired on speed. I literally could not stop moving, my brain was stuck on overdrive and I had no appetite, even though I had not eaten at all that day. I pushed myself to get the rabbits their salads and dinner, took a shower and crawled into bed, grateful that this singularly awful, horrible day was finally over.
This day really sucked but somehow, in the grand scheme of things, it could have been much worse. All my rabbits were fine, I was okay other than being completely exhausted mentally and physically, and no one lost their life or got injured. But still, so many bad, depressing, costly and unnecessary things happened and I lost so much from the power surge, it really is going to take time and a lot of money to get back to somewhere near where things used to be. There's something about the beginning of July being the time that some really bad things happen to me. Last year on July 6th was my automobile accident where my car was totaled, this year it was the Storm from Hell and the horrific aftermath. Sometimes life really sucks, but as with everything, you find a way to get through it.
Actually things started to get weird the previous day, Wednesday. It started with an abandoned rabbit call at a run-down apartment building in north Phoenix. It seems that some tenants moved out in the middle of the night and left their two rabbits to fend for themselves on a second-floor patio. I'm not going to start on the kind of vile human detritus that would do that to a couple of rabbits they had as pets. I guess for some people it's impossible to form an emotional bond with anything, and that is probably the worst punishment anyone could endure, living life without love and caring for anything other than your own worthless piece-of-shit existence. Anyway, the people who called had no idea what to do and had no means of transporting them to the Humane Society, where they could be cared for. So I said I would run a taxi service and take them. The two bunnies were youngsters, one black and the other black and white, and were extremely friendly and sweet. How someone could turn their backs on them and walk away without any concern for their welfare is so far beyond my comprehension I have no words.
After that was done, I got a call from one of our foster caregivers, Nancy, who was fostering Tilly and her four babies for Brambley Hedge. It seems her home's air conditioning went out, something you definitely DON'T WANT to happen in Phoenix in July, and I had to get Tilly and her brood out. I went to pick them up, and I also took in her 8-week-old kitten she is fostering. The kitten is black with gold and green eyes, and just a bundle of limitless energy and play. Little Krazy Kat thinks my pet doves are really fascinatng and particular my dove Lily, who has free range in the house. Kitteh thinks Lily is the Best Thing Ever. I haven't had a kitten in my house for a very long time and I had almost forgotten how much fun they can be. Except when they wake up at 4am and won't stop meowing. More on that later.
Late that evening around 11pm, when I was getting ready for bed, a monsoon storm kicked in outside and the rain started coming down and the wind started howling. Monsoon storms can be violent and unpredictable, and this one was a doozy, with loud, crashing thunder and extreme lightning. I was watching it out the front window when an enormous blast of lightning struck. The entire sky turned a brilliant, emerald green for a split second, something I had never seen before, and it hit near a utility pole on the other side of my back fence, causing a power transformer to blow up. There was a really loud explosion, and the entire block was plunged into blackness. Losing all power is also something that you NEVER EVER want to deal with in the middle of summer. When that happened, the first words out of my mouth were, "I am SO screwed." I had no idea how true that would be.
So here I am in the sweltering darkness, unable to do much of anything. I did go around and made sure the rabbits and the kitten were secured, and just had to wait it out. I called the local electric company and they gave a restoration estimate of 3am. It was too hot to stay in bed, so I tried laying on the ceramic tile floor in my bedroom. It was the only way to stay cool, but sleep was impossible. Around 1am the houses across the street got power back, but my side of the street is on a separate electrical grid, and we stayed in darkness. Turns out, getting power back early wouldn't have made a bit of difference.
Three A.M. came around with no change, so I called the electric company and now they said 5am restoration. Great, I thought, but really there was no choice. I couldn't sleep and was starting to get headaches, backaches and leg cramps. Bitch whine moan, I know, but you try sleeping on a hard floor for five hours and see how you feel.
Around 4am Kitteh woke up and did not know where she was, and started a constant meowing which continued until 7am. I was starting to think I had died and gone to hell at some point. Morning also brought a realization that my recycling bin, which I had placed out by the street for Thursday collection, had been knocked over and my trash had been blown up and down the whole street.
It began to get light outside and this long, horrendous night was coming to an end, but not before I noticed that the strong winds had ripped one of my garage doors nearly entirely off. While I was fixing that, power was finally restored at 7:15am, and I thought I might be home free. But when I turned on the air conditioning - nothing. It wouldn't start, almost like it had no power. I ran back and forth desperately from the side of the house where the A/C unit was to my back patio where the circuit breakers were and could find nothing wrong. I began to panic since I had over 20 rabbits in my house and the temperature was only going to go up from that point, and without a doubt my worst nightmare is having lots of bunnies in the house and no air conditioning.
I checked my land line phone and it too, was dead, no dial tone, just silence. I thought well, due to the violent storm maybe there was a phone outage. My cell phone still worked and I ended up calling BHRR friend and supporter Galen Boal, who runs an air conditioning repair business, and he very graciously came over at 8am and fixed my A/C and got it running. He said he did it for the bunnies and would take no payment. I can't express how thankful I am to Galen for his willingness to help and the donation of his time and expertise to keep the bunnies (and me) comfortable and cool.
So, with the A/C blasting lovely cool air throughout the house, I thought well, I may be out of the woods NOW. Oh, that would hardly be the case...
I went to my desktop computer and turned it on to log in and check email, and the flat screen monitor would not turn on. After a bit of checking I determine the power supply transformer was dead. How odd, I thought. So I went to my laptop but could not get to the Internet. After a lot more checking I discovered that my wireless network and my broadband router were both fried. Kaput. Screwed. I realized another of my nightmares had come true - a power surge.
When the lightning hit last night, it created a massive electromagnetic field for a split second. Most of my electronic equipment runs on some sort of transformer, and since transformers are mostly big coils of copper wire, a current burst was induced and stuff got fried. In fact that's what was wrong with my air conditioning, a 24-volt transformer in the main unit got toasted. Luckily it was easily replaced, but my other equipment was out of luck. Also luckily my HDTV, refrigerator and other big-ticket electronics were surge-protected, but I still lost a lot of electrical components, and I am still finding things that were destroyed by the surge. Even the dimmer switch on the overhead light above my kitchen table was ruined. A dimmer switch? Really?
In the midst of all this I still had to pick up a bunny coming to our shelter from the Humane Society of Yuma at 11am. A little gray Holland Lop, it had been kept in a cage with another, unneutered male rabbit who attacked and beat up the smaller rabbit without mercy. Their idiot owner finally wised up and separated them, and dumped the smaller injured bunny off at the Humane Society, and from there to us. Poor little guy, named Giblet, has numerous scars and bite marks all over his head and body, and some big lumpy scar tissue around his eye, but somehow, almost magically, Giblet is still very sweet, friendly and trusting. It never fails to amaze me how resilient and accepting rabbits are to even the most horrendous, painful treatments. His photo is below.
Later that afternoon my trusty laptop computer decided it was a good day to die, and did just that. I got a dreaded Blue Screen of Death and then it would not boot up. This laptop was at least 5 years old and pretty much had my life on it. Luckily I did a major data backup last week when it was starting to act up, but I didn't expect it to die. I think the hard drive is shot. I definitely have gotten my money's worth from that computer, using it nearly every day for hours and hours, but still, I am going to lose so much stuff in terms of pictures and documents, it is so not fair. It's in the repair shop right now and may there's something that can be done to save it, but I am not optimistic. Damn.
By early evening I had just about had it. I was running on adrenaline from no sleep the night before, and it was like being wired on speed. I literally could not stop moving, my brain was stuck on overdrive and I had no appetite, even though I had not eaten at all that day. I pushed myself to get the rabbits their salads and dinner, took a shower and crawled into bed, grateful that this singularly awful, horrible day was finally over.
This day really sucked but somehow, in the grand scheme of things, it could have been much worse. All my rabbits were fine, I was okay other than being completely exhausted mentally and physically, and no one lost their life or got injured. But still, so many bad, depressing, costly and unnecessary things happened and I lost so much from the power surge, it really is going to take time and a lot of money to get back to somewhere near where things used to be. There's something about the beginning of July being the time that some really bad things happen to me. Last year on July 6th was my automobile accident where my car was totaled, this year it was the Storm from Hell and the horrific aftermath. Sometimes life really sucks, but as with everything, you find a way to get through it.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
News From Hell
The past six days have been an amazing news cycle, one of the busiest we've seen in ages. A lot of very important stuff happened, and there was something for everybody to love and hate.
First off, last Friday the jury in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse trial came back with 45 guilty counts out of 48 charges. The whole situation is pretty dreadful and awful, and is an object lesson in how things can get completely out of control when authority figures feel they can do whatever they damned well please and the "good ol' boy" network will shield and protect them. Sandusky's predation on young boys is stomach-turning in the extreme, and the administration of Penn State University choosing to do nothing in the face of undeniable evidence is something they will have to answer to and pay for dearly.
One has to wonder how such horrendous abuse seemed so easy. There has been a lot of investigation into the mindset of child molesters, and a lot of them pick occupations or endeavors that place them in direct contact with their quarry. Sports coaches in the past have been automatically assumed to be benign and the vast majority of them are, but for the small percentage who are child predators, it provides an ideal shield and opportunity for their nefarious activities.
When I was a child, I was taught that adults were to be obeyed unconditionally and they were always right. For me it was a fact of life that if the teacher gave you a beating in school for doing something wrong, when you got home you got another beating, because the teacher was always right, and you were always wrong. That kind of blind, abject deference to "authority" creates the perfect climate for abuse. It's like if a burglar comes to your home to rob it, and you welcome him with open arms and make him a nice dinner as he ransacks your house.
Sandusky will die in prison, as he deserves, but what of the lives he has destroyed with his sick activities? There are no winners in this whole sorry situation, just pain and wreckage.
The following Monday had the Supreme Court striking down most of Arizona's hateful, racist SB1070, the draconian anti-immigration law passed in 2010, much to the delight of the bigots and hate-mongers in this wretched, godforsaken state. Governor Jan "The Walking Dead" Brewer signed it with much fanfare, and used the resulting court challenges as a tool to raise nearly $4 million to defend it. Even as recently as last week, when conventional wisdom indicated (incorrectly, it turns out) the Court would uphold the legality of SB1070, that dried-up old corpse was gleefully sending training materials out to police officials. So it was particularly gratifying when the Court struck down most of the provisions of the law, and left the door wide open for future legal challenges to the part of it that was left standing. Brewer immediately went on the news media and we were treated to the pathetic sight of that delusional, hatchet-faced old hag trying in vain to spin the ruling in her favor. It's been obvious for a very long time that Brewer is incredibly stupid and most likely mentally disturbed, and she can add pathetic embarrassment to the very long list of reasons why she needs to go.
There was also a ruling in a Montana case which very tragically affirmed the vile, loathsome Citizens United ruling of 2010, which opened the floodgates to a deluge of corporate money into the election process. This is plainly astonishing, as nearly everyone except the Republicans agree that the original ruling was a horrendous, horrific abomination and probably one of the very worst Supreme Court rulings in the history of this country. As Mannequin Romney says, "Corporations are people!" and much to the detriment of this country, the Court agrees. Another terrible, awful ruling from a Court that seems to take the side of corporations over the welfare of the American people.
Of course in the midst of all this history there just has to be some batshit-craziness, and that was provided by the witch hunt tight-assed douchebag Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Ca) is waging against Attorney General Eric Holder. There was this little sting operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives called "Fast and Furious." started during the George W. Bush administration, which sought to trace firearms used by Mexican drug cartels back to sellers in the US. They ran into a little snag due to the incredibly lax and ridiculous gun laws in (where else?) Arizona. It seems that a couple of people plopped down $350,000 for 650 guns, got them, and just waltzed across the border to the south where drug cartels got an early Navidad, because according to AZ gun laws, there wasn't anything illegal or suspicious about a purchase that size. Now that this fiasco has blown up all over the place, AG Holder is getting blamed for everything, and the 2nd Amendment gun nuts are all bent out of shape, saying the failed sting operation is all a big scheme by the Obama administration to ram stricter gun laws down everyone's throats. Because it's so important to be able to spend $350K on guns without some law enforcement agency asking you a lot of inconvenient questions. Yeah, they really ARE that stupid. They're gun nuts.
The big-deal ruling dropped this morning, when the Supreme Court basically reaffirmed the constitutionality of Obama's centerpiece Affordable Health Care Act, individual mandate and all. There is still much to discuss and learn about this ruling, but the important take-away is that Republicans and right-wingers are crapping broken glass now, and will do so for the foreseeable future. It is extremely gratifying to see all the right-wingers losing their shit in a very public fashion. Anything that makes conservative right-wingers unhappy makes me EXTREMELY happy, and I have a great deal to be happy about this morning.
First off, last Friday the jury in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse trial came back with 45 guilty counts out of 48 charges. The whole situation is pretty dreadful and awful, and is an object lesson in how things can get completely out of control when authority figures feel they can do whatever they damned well please and the "good ol' boy" network will shield and protect them. Sandusky's predation on young boys is stomach-turning in the extreme, and the administration of Penn State University choosing to do nothing in the face of undeniable evidence is something they will have to answer to and pay for dearly.
One has to wonder how such horrendous abuse seemed so easy. There has been a lot of investigation into the mindset of child molesters, and a lot of them pick occupations or endeavors that place them in direct contact with their quarry. Sports coaches in the past have been automatically assumed to be benign and the vast majority of them are, but for the small percentage who are child predators, it provides an ideal shield and opportunity for their nefarious activities.
When I was a child, I was taught that adults were to be obeyed unconditionally and they were always right. For me it was a fact of life that if the teacher gave you a beating in school for doing something wrong, when you got home you got another beating, because the teacher was always right, and you were always wrong. That kind of blind, abject deference to "authority" creates the perfect climate for abuse. It's like if a burglar comes to your home to rob it, and you welcome him with open arms and make him a nice dinner as he ransacks your house.
Sandusky will die in prison, as he deserves, but what of the lives he has destroyed with his sick activities? There are no winners in this whole sorry situation, just pain and wreckage.
The following Monday had the Supreme Court striking down most of Arizona's hateful, racist SB1070, the draconian anti-immigration law passed in 2010, much to the delight of the bigots and hate-mongers in this wretched, godforsaken state. Governor Jan "The Walking Dead" Brewer signed it with much fanfare, and used the resulting court challenges as a tool to raise nearly $4 million to defend it. Even as recently as last week, when conventional wisdom indicated (incorrectly, it turns out) the Court would uphold the legality of SB1070, that dried-up old corpse was gleefully sending training materials out to police officials. So it was particularly gratifying when the Court struck down most of the provisions of the law, and left the door wide open for future legal challenges to the part of it that was left standing. Brewer immediately went on the news media and we were treated to the pathetic sight of that delusional, hatchet-faced old hag trying in vain to spin the ruling in her favor. It's been obvious for a very long time that Brewer is incredibly stupid and most likely mentally disturbed, and she can add pathetic embarrassment to the very long list of reasons why she needs to go.
There was also a ruling in a Montana case which very tragically affirmed the vile, loathsome Citizens United ruling of 2010, which opened the floodgates to a deluge of corporate money into the election process. This is plainly astonishing, as nearly everyone except the Republicans agree that the original ruling was a horrendous, horrific abomination and probably one of the very worst Supreme Court rulings in the history of this country. As Mannequin Romney says, "Corporations are people!" and much to the detriment of this country, the Court agrees. Another terrible, awful ruling from a Court that seems to take the side of corporations over the welfare of the American people.
Of course in the midst of all this history there just has to be some batshit-craziness, and that was provided by the witch hunt tight-assed douchebag Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Ca) is waging against Attorney General Eric Holder. There was this little sting operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives called "Fast and Furious." started during the George W. Bush administration, which sought to trace firearms used by Mexican drug cartels back to sellers in the US. They ran into a little snag due to the incredibly lax and ridiculous gun laws in (where else?) Arizona. It seems that a couple of people plopped down $350,000 for 650 guns, got them, and just waltzed across the border to the south where drug cartels got an early Navidad, because according to AZ gun laws, there wasn't anything illegal or suspicious about a purchase that size. Now that this fiasco has blown up all over the place, AG Holder is getting blamed for everything, and the 2nd Amendment gun nuts are all bent out of shape, saying the failed sting operation is all a big scheme by the Obama administration to ram stricter gun laws down everyone's throats. Because it's so important to be able to spend $350K on guns without some law enforcement agency asking you a lot of inconvenient questions. Yeah, they really ARE that stupid. They're gun nuts.
The big-deal ruling dropped this morning, when the Supreme Court basically reaffirmed the constitutionality of Obama's centerpiece Affordable Health Care Act, individual mandate and all. There is still much to discuss and learn about this ruling, but the important take-away is that Republicans and right-wingers are crapping broken glass now, and will do so for the foreseeable future. It is extremely gratifying to see all the right-wingers losing their shit in a very public fashion. Anything that makes conservative right-wingers unhappy makes me EXTREMELY happy, and I have a great deal to be happy about this morning.
Friday, June 15, 2012
The One in Three
I have been doing cottontail rehab for a couple of years now, and I can't think of anything else I have ever done in my life that can be so rewarding and so emotionally devastating at the same time.
My survival rate with the little bunnies is not good at all, probably one in three babies I get survive to be released into the wild. But in this business a 50% survival rate is considered pretty good, so I'm not that far behind. Still, losing any little babies that come into my care can be very painful.
One in three is just not good enough.
Two young cottontails came to me recently. Nine days ago, when I was working at the thrift store, a woman and her daughter came in carrying a glass aquarium with a little bunny inside. They said it was in danger of being a snack for a bull snake when it was saved, and they wondered if we could take it in, since they had no clue what to do. I said sure, and brought home the little ball of fluff with the huge ears. This is a picture of the bunny:
This little bun is probably close to a month in age, older than most cottontails I get. He or she is doing very well, eating with great enthusiasm, and exhibited genuine outrage and indignance when I tried to clean his enclosure the other day, standing his ground and boxing my hand with the greatest of attitude. And you can't help but love that.
Three days ago I got a much younger and tinier cottontail, brought to me by my friend Kathy in Payson. Looking a lot like a furry golf ball with ears, his eyes had just opened up that day, which would put him between 10 and 14 days old.
He looked so very small and fragile, and Kathy asked me to take him because she had never cared for a bunny so tiny. I agreed, since we have a nursing domestic mother rabbit, Tilly, and usually the mother rabbit will accept another tiny mouth to feed with no problem. Tilly's four babies, born nearly three weeks ago, were about 4 times as big as the little cottontail, but I would try to place the baby with Tilly.
Unfortunately that did not work out, and the baby for some reason could not get enough milk from Tilly, even though she was loaded with it. I took the baby back and started to feed him with goat's milk through an eyedropper, standard procedure with cottontail babies that size.
The goat's milk seemed to upset the babies stomach, and appeared to be doing more harm than good. With my options dwindling, I started the baby on kitten replacement formula, and that seemed to work much better. The baby sometimes got an "Ewww" face when I fed it, but it seemed to be doing well being fed three times a day.
The little one spent a lot of time sleeping, as do all bunnies that age, but could be very active and spry. He (or she) got to recognize my voice and ran out of his little cardboard box when I came up to his enclosure. I would put my hand inside his tank and he would scramble up into my palm. He loved to be rubbed and gently stroked, and would lick my hands and fingers quite vigorously, until he fell asleep five minutes later. This is a picture of the little one:
I spent a lot of time holding the little baby, since it seemed to crave physical contact and enjoy it so much. I loved holding that tiny, incredibly fragile, little droplet of life. How could that little ball of fuzz with the tiny ears, barely weighing an ounce (less than 1/3000th of my body weight), steal my heart in less than 24 hours? I swear that if someone came in and stuck a gun to my head and told me to crush the life out of that little speck in my hand, I would say go ahead and shoot. A bullet to the brain would be fast and quick, as opposed to a lifetime of remembering the alternative.
The little bunny ate fairly well, but never enough, and it didn't seem to grow much at all over the past couple of days. It always seemed skinny and thin, and it was not putting on weight as it should. It would consume a bit of kitten formula, but soon started to bat the eyedropper away from its mouth. In spite of that I was cautiously optimistic, but I knew the little one was by no means out of the woods yet.
Today everything seemed normal, and this afternoon I held him in my hand for a while. As usual, he licked my fingers and then snuggled in for a little snooze. I put him back in his enclosure and went to the gym.
I returned to find him lying on his side, breathing in shallow gasps. He had crashed on me, as is all too typical for these delicate little creatures. He was dying, and his internal organs were slowly shutting down.
I picked him up and held him in the palm of my hand, cradling his failing body and trying to let him know I was there. He looked at me with his tiny dark eyes as if to say, "Why?" I could not answer. I didn't know why his little life was being ended after such an incredibly short time. I still can't come up with an answer.
He did not want to go, and fought his impending death for a good 20 minutes. He gasped, stretched his arms and legs out several times, and endured a series of twitches and spasms. Finally, he took one last gasp, and reared his head back. His body went limp, and his breathing stopped.
I am done cursing out the universe or whatever deity is currently in charge. I can't believe any deity of any kind - even the hateful, vengeful Christian one - would create an innocent life like that, so small and beautiful, only to take it away a short time later. Some events seem so utterly, completely pointless and without merit. Why couldn't that little one live?
It's been a rough year so far, with many beloved rabbits going to the Bridge. Camilla, Babs, Elinor, Georgia, my own bunny Apricot, quite a few others. At least this newest, tiniest resident at the Rainbow Bridge will be welcomed and cared for by some absolutely wonderful, beautiful rabbits.
And when I get another cottontail baby - and I know I will - so frail and delicate and hanging onto life by a thread, most likely I might have to go through all this again. Why do I do this? Why would I subject myself to having my heart ripped apart and stomped on the floor, again and again?
For the one in three, that's why.
My survival rate with the little bunnies is not good at all, probably one in three babies I get survive to be released into the wild. But in this business a 50% survival rate is considered pretty good, so I'm not that far behind. Still, losing any little babies that come into my care can be very painful.
One in three is just not good enough.
Two young cottontails came to me recently. Nine days ago, when I was working at the thrift store, a woman and her daughter came in carrying a glass aquarium with a little bunny inside. They said it was in danger of being a snack for a bull snake when it was saved, and they wondered if we could take it in, since they had no clue what to do. I said sure, and brought home the little ball of fluff with the huge ears. This is a picture of the bunny:
This little bun is probably close to a month in age, older than most cottontails I get. He or she is doing very well, eating with great enthusiasm, and exhibited genuine outrage and indignance when I tried to clean his enclosure the other day, standing his ground and boxing my hand with the greatest of attitude. And you can't help but love that.
Three days ago I got a much younger and tinier cottontail, brought to me by my friend Kathy in Payson. Looking a lot like a furry golf ball with ears, his eyes had just opened up that day, which would put him between 10 and 14 days old.
He looked so very small and fragile, and Kathy asked me to take him because she had never cared for a bunny so tiny. I agreed, since we have a nursing domestic mother rabbit, Tilly, and usually the mother rabbit will accept another tiny mouth to feed with no problem. Tilly's four babies, born nearly three weeks ago, were about 4 times as big as the little cottontail, but I would try to place the baby with Tilly.
Unfortunately that did not work out, and the baby for some reason could not get enough milk from Tilly, even though she was loaded with it. I took the baby back and started to feed him with goat's milk through an eyedropper, standard procedure with cottontail babies that size.
The goat's milk seemed to upset the babies stomach, and appeared to be doing more harm than good. With my options dwindling, I started the baby on kitten replacement formula, and that seemed to work much better. The baby sometimes got an "Ewww" face when I fed it, but it seemed to be doing well being fed three times a day.
The little one spent a lot of time sleeping, as do all bunnies that age, but could be very active and spry. He (or she) got to recognize my voice and ran out of his little cardboard box when I came up to his enclosure. I would put my hand inside his tank and he would scramble up into my palm. He loved to be rubbed and gently stroked, and would lick my hands and fingers quite vigorously, until he fell asleep five minutes later. This is a picture of the little one:
I spent a lot of time holding the little baby, since it seemed to crave physical contact and enjoy it so much. I loved holding that tiny, incredibly fragile, little droplet of life. How could that little ball of fuzz with the tiny ears, barely weighing an ounce (less than 1/3000th of my body weight), steal my heart in less than 24 hours? I swear that if someone came in and stuck a gun to my head and told me to crush the life out of that little speck in my hand, I would say go ahead and shoot. A bullet to the brain would be fast and quick, as opposed to a lifetime of remembering the alternative.
The little bunny ate fairly well, but never enough, and it didn't seem to grow much at all over the past couple of days. It always seemed skinny and thin, and it was not putting on weight as it should. It would consume a bit of kitten formula, but soon started to bat the eyedropper away from its mouth. In spite of that I was cautiously optimistic, but I knew the little one was by no means out of the woods yet.
Today everything seemed normal, and this afternoon I held him in my hand for a while. As usual, he licked my fingers and then snuggled in for a little snooze. I put him back in his enclosure and went to the gym.
I returned to find him lying on his side, breathing in shallow gasps. He had crashed on me, as is all too typical for these delicate little creatures. He was dying, and his internal organs were slowly shutting down.
I picked him up and held him in the palm of my hand, cradling his failing body and trying to let him know I was there. He looked at me with his tiny dark eyes as if to say, "Why?" I could not answer. I didn't know why his little life was being ended after such an incredibly short time. I still can't come up with an answer.
He did not want to go, and fought his impending death for a good 20 minutes. He gasped, stretched his arms and legs out several times, and endured a series of twitches and spasms. Finally, he took one last gasp, and reared his head back. His body went limp, and his breathing stopped.
I am done cursing out the universe or whatever deity is currently in charge. I can't believe any deity of any kind - even the hateful, vengeful Christian one - would create an innocent life like that, so small and beautiful, only to take it away a short time later. Some events seem so utterly, completely pointless and without merit. Why couldn't that little one live?
It's been a rough year so far, with many beloved rabbits going to the Bridge. Camilla, Babs, Elinor, Georgia, my own bunny Apricot, quite a few others. At least this newest, tiniest resident at the Rainbow Bridge will be welcomed and cared for by some absolutely wonderful, beautiful rabbits.
And when I get another cottontail baby - and I know I will - so frail and delicate and hanging onto life by a thread, most likely I might have to go through all this again. Why do I do this? Why would I subject myself to having my heart ripped apart and stomped on the floor, again and again?
For the one in three, that's why.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
R.I.P. Democracy
It would appear that America's rather fanciful 236-year experiment with democracy is officially over. Once given the backhanded compliment of being the "worst form of government on earth, except for all the others," democracy was nonetheless touted as the best that the human race could come up with, and something to which all nations should aspire. And, when it comes to giving the average citizen a say in what happens to their lives, American democracy could once lay claim to being the best of the best. But something called the Citizens United ruling put an end to that, in dramatic fashion.
Democracy itself has a long and storied history, originating with the ancient Greeks and spreading to many areas of the world since then. It has gone through refinements and tweaking, as all dynamic, living ideas will, but there comes a time when a tweak will turn into something much more toxic and poisonous.
Big news this week was the attempted recall of governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. Walker and the other Republican bloodsuckers in that state went on a rampage against public sector unions - you know, representing all those greedy and overpaid teachers, police officers and firefighters - and passed unprecedented legislation to take away their collective bargaining rights, which had been in place for decades. Blaming the unions for being the source of a huge budget deficit, Walker and his stooges decided that the bargaining rights were at the root of everything that ever went wrong anywhere since the beginning of time, and they had to go. People of all types went understandably nuts, and huge protests paralyzed the state capitol daily. The country was treated to the extraordinary spectacle of Democratic state legislators fleeing to a neighboring state to avoid a quorum in the legislature to pass the heinous bill.
All this was a blatant and obvious attempt at union busting, since unions are widely seen as sympathetic to Democrats and a source of campaign funds for them. Republicans hate employee unions, for lots of reasons. They're seen as fighting for annoyances such as fair treatment of workers, equitable wages and benefits, and for taking profit out of the coffers of corporations. Back in the 1950s and 1960s unions had great power, but the advent of the right-to-work movements in states, particular southern states, curtailed that power.
Unions have been on the run for a long time now due to rapidly declining membership and influence, and Republicans smelled blood. They took a gamble on creating a showdown with the unions, and Wisconsin became the crucible for that battle. Recall petitions were signed and an election was scheduled. At first it seemed that Walker would be shown the door in quick fashion, but a little problem cropped up.
It seems that the US Supreme Court ruled on something called the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010. That ruling stated that "the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations and unions." This meant that corporations and other outside influences, could dump as much money as they wanted into elections to try and sway the outcome. When the ruling came down, the entire country gasped in stunned disbelief at such an outlandish concept - that corporations have a measure of freedom of speech, and that can somehow be transmuted into enormous amounts of money being allowed to pour into an electoral system already choked to death with special-interest dollars. That's like giving a smoker with stage 4 lung cancer a carton of cigarettes and saying, "Enjoy them, there's lots more where they came from!"
Also aided by a ridiculous loophole in Wisconsin law which imposed a $10K upper limit on contributions to the Democratic challenger, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, but not on incumbent Walker, Republican money poured in. The national Republican Reichstag regarded this as a test case, a prelude to the presidential election this fall, and pulled out all the stops to win. The following graphic tells you everything you need to know about the amount of money that poured into that state, and where it came from:
The Wisconsin media was flooded with nonstop advertising, and Republican Z-listers like Nikki Haley, some trollop governor from somewhere who is portrayed as a Tea Party "rising star" (read: amoral famewhore), was dragged in for campaign appearances. The Republican blitzkrieg worked, and Walker won the election 54% to 45%. And therein came the death of democracy.
It is an epically tragic commentary on the political system of this country that, in a very real sense, whoever has the most money wins. Money buys advertising, and with enough of it, opinions can be swayed. It's really sad that so many voters can be influenced by what they see on television or in print, and accept it without one iota of critical thought. Some people believe anything they see on television, and Citizens United just opened up the floodgates for a huge torrent of biased, blatantly prejudiced misinformation to rush in, and the financial backers of this tsunami of bullshit don't even have to tell you who they are.
The Wisconsin recall was only a little glimpse into hell, a tiny preview of the carnage that's going to happen in the upcoming November elections. As a direct result of Citizens United, it's been estimated that the Republican side will raise and spend a billion dollars trying to buy the White House and the Senate. And the gods help us all, they may very well do it.
For democracy to work, it's absolutely critical that those being governed are informed, engaged and fully participating in the process. That's the part that's missing. American voters are by far too lazy, ignorant and uneducated to learn enough about the issues facing them to make intelligent choices. Instead, they choose to let other people tell them what to think and do, and their vote will go for whoever created the slickest and most eye-catching political advertisement. For the vast majority of voters, that is far easier than actually "learning" about the problems they have and "making good choices". Let Rush Limbaugh and the Koch brothers tell you what to do. Just sit back, pop open another brewski, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. It will all be over before you know it.
Right after the Citizens United ruling was announced in 2010, I said that in future decades, people will look back at this time and say, "This is where it all started, this is the exact point in time where everything started to go to hell." I believed then and I more firmly believe now, that the Citizens United ruling will go down in history as one of the absolute worst, if not THE worst, Supreme Court ruling ever. The only ways to correct this spectacularly bad ruling is for the Supreme Court to reverse itself in a future case and admit they had made a truly awful, terrible ruling (very unlikely) or for Congress to willingly pass laws turning off the spigot to an unlimited supply of corporate money pouring into their campaigns. Yeah, THAT'LL happen. Citizens United is a stunningly, breathtakingly bad example of how horribly wrong things can go.
I believe the full effect of that ruling in the future will be far, far worse than anything we can imagine today. It will be seen as the day democracy died.
Democracy itself has a long and storied history, originating with the ancient Greeks and spreading to many areas of the world since then. It has gone through refinements and tweaking, as all dynamic, living ideas will, but there comes a time when a tweak will turn into something much more toxic and poisonous.
Big news this week was the attempted recall of governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. Walker and the other Republican bloodsuckers in that state went on a rampage against public sector unions - you know, representing all those greedy and overpaid teachers, police officers and firefighters - and passed unprecedented legislation to take away their collective bargaining rights, which had been in place for decades. Blaming the unions for being the source of a huge budget deficit, Walker and his stooges decided that the bargaining rights were at the root of everything that ever went wrong anywhere since the beginning of time, and they had to go. People of all types went understandably nuts, and huge protests paralyzed the state capitol daily. The country was treated to the extraordinary spectacle of Democratic state legislators fleeing to a neighboring state to avoid a quorum in the legislature to pass the heinous bill.
All this was a blatant and obvious attempt at union busting, since unions are widely seen as sympathetic to Democrats and a source of campaign funds for them. Republicans hate employee unions, for lots of reasons. They're seen as fighting for annoyances such as fair treatment of workers, equitable wages and benefits, and for taking profit out of the coffers of corporations. Back in the 1950s and 1960s unions had great power, but the advent of the right-to-work movements in states, particular southern states, curtailed that power.
Unions have been on the run for a long time now due to rapidly declining membership and influence, and Republicans smelled blood. They took a gamble on creating a showdown with the unions, and Wisconsin became the crucible for that battle. Recall petitions were signed and an election was scheduled. At first it seemed that Walker would be shown the door in quick fashion, but a little problem cropped up.
It seems that the US Supreme Court ruled on something called the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010. That ruling stated that "the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations and unions." This meant that corporations and other outside influences, could dump as much money as they wanted into elections to try and sway the outcome. When the ruling came down, the entire country gasped in stunned disbelief at such an outlandish concept - that corporations have a measure of freedom of speech, and that can somehow be transmuted into enormous amounts of money being allowed to pour into an electoral system already choked to death with special-interest dollars. That's like giving a smoker with stage 4 lung cancer a carton of cigarettes and saying, "Enjoy them, there's lots more where they came from!"
Also aided by a ridiculous loophole in Wisconsin law which imposed a $10K upper limit on contributions to the Democratic challenger, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, but not on incumbent Walker, Republican money poured in. The national Republican Reichstag regarded this as a test case, a prelude to the presidential election this fall, and pulled out all the stops to win. The following graphic tells you everything you need to know about the amount of money that poured into that state, and where it came from:
The Wisconsin media was flooded with nonstop advertising, and Republican Z-listers like Nikki Haley, some trollop governor from somewhere who is portrayed as a Tea Party "rising star" (read: amoral famewhore), was dragged in for campaign appearances. The Republican blitzkrieg worked, and Walker won the election 54% to 45%. And therein came the death of democracy.
It is an epically tragic commentary on the political system of this country that, in a very real sense, whoever has the most money wins. Money buys advertising, and with enough of it, opinions can be swayed. It's really sad that so many voters can be influenced by what they see on television or in print, and accept it without one iota of critical thought. Some people believe anything they see on television, and Citizens United just opened up the floodgates for a huge torrent of biased, blatantly prejudiced misinformation to rush in, and the financial backers of this tsunami of bullshit don't even have to tell you who they are.
The Wisconsin recall was only a little glimpse into hell, a tiny preview of the carnage that's going to happen in the upcoming November elections. As a direct result of Citizens United, it's been estimated that the Republican side will raise and spend a billion dollars trying to buy the White House and the Senate. And the gods help us all, they may very well do it.
For democracy to work, it's absolutely critical that those being governed are informed, engaged and fully participating in the process. That's the part that's missing. American voters are by far too lazy, ignorant and uneducated to learn enough about the issues facing them to make intelligent choices. Instead, they choose to let other people tell them what to think and do, and their vote will go for whoever created the slickest and most eye-catching political advertisement. For the vast majority of voters, that is far easier than actually "learning" about the problems they have and "making good choices". Let Rush Limbaugh and the Koch brothers tell you what to do. Just sit back, pop open another brewski, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. It will all be over before you know it.
Right after the Citizens United ruling was announced in 2010, I said that in future decades, people will look back at this time and say, "This is where it all started, this is the exact point in time where everything started to go to hell." I believed then and I more firmly believe now, that the Citizens United ruling will go down in history as one of the absolute worst, if not THE worst, Supreme Court ruling ever. The only ways to correct this spectacularly bad ruling is for the Supreme Court to reverse itself in a future case and admit they had made a truly awful, terrible ruling (very unlikely) or for Congress to willingly pass laws turning off the spigot to an unlimited supply of corporate money pouring into their campaigns. Yeah, THAT'LL happen. Citizens United is a stunningly, breathtakingly bad example of how horribly wrong things can go.
I believe the full effect of that ruling in the future will be far, far worse than anything we can imagine today. It will be seen as the day democracy died.
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