I am dog person and I am not describing my looks. I love them and I don’t want to live without them, however...
We all talk of the dog being man’s best friend but I think this is way over stated. If anyone of my friends chewed my slippers and peed on my floor, without being drunk, I might have to reconsider our friendship, whether of not I worked for their Dad or thought their sister was hot.
I listen to quite a bit of music and I don’t know of any hit songs that were ever written for a dog. It could be that they are tone deaf and it would be a waste of time or maybe it is just too hard for them to hear the song over their constant panting? I just don’t see a big hit anytime soon about someone leaving on a jet airplane and their tears are for Rover or someone coming home from prison and the dog has tied 100 yellow collars on the tree to let them know that they love them (sorry Tony Orlando)
A measure of real friendship is if they take you to the airport, help you move and lend you money. I have yet to see a dog ever pick any one up or drop anyone off. And as far as moving, no animal makes it harder, grabbing the edge of boxes, bringing things back into the house and trying to jump in your lap while you swerve a 24 foot truck down the Interstate. And as far as lending money, I could not even get a nugget from her feeding bowl with out a growl and a finger donation, so I have never looked to my dog for rent.
There are only 14 animals that have been domesticated for either food or to be beasts of burden. That is 14 out of millions. There are only 2 that got the benefits of domestication without having to do anything other than look cute. Cats and Dogs. I can’t even say anything interesting or funny about cats. They are just plain evil. Growing up, I lost several nylon pants (they were big in the 70’s) because of our rogue family cat. She would leap from hidden places and claw me, leaving strands and rips in my pants. I only had a couple of pair of pants at one time so this was a big deal. I hated that cat. She was a man eater and she had developed a taste for my blood. My sister named her Sugar but she was more like fermented sugar, bitter and foul.
We like to think that dogs are smart. As compared to what? Compared to my ‘pull my finger’ Uncle Maury? It reminds me of how new parents will tell everyone how smart their kid is...sorry folks, your child has as many brain folds as a chimpanzee and an even lower IQ, and for some of us that will be the height of our intellectual achievement. Dogs have an easier learning curve. Fetch, sit, roll over, come here and go the bathroom in the appropriate place and they get the label of being smart. I keep telling my girlfriend that I am smart but she says I only have 3 out the 5 behaviors down to any consistent degree. I think, on the other hand, that I am smarter than a dog. A dog will eat right out of the cat box and I have never been that drunk. Also, I installed a bidet in my bathroom and my dog thought I had put in a water fountain just for him. At least I know which end the fountain is for.
I like to imagine dog conversations (because that is what I do early in the morning) I can see a puppy asking his mother who its father is...
“I don’t know who your father is, I never really saw him”. I think this heart break news is when they first develop those puppy dog eyes. My favorite would be the puppy's mother turning around to a would be father and telling him,
“I don't think so....you've already had your day”.
I can completely relate, I have had a couple of ex wives tell me the very same thing,
Now, I make fun of dogs but, I also make fun of myself every morning when I look in the mirror. A dog is dedicated and maybe that is the best indication of friendship. A dog would never leave you, never forsake you. If I were standing at the Great Wall of China and I threw a stick that went over the wall, my dog would take off to find his way around the wall. It is unlikely he would ever stop running. That is commitment. My dog would die for me. I have been asked which two friends I would want in a foxhole with me. The first answer is a secret but the second one would have to be my dog, Sam...
Friday, July 23, 2010
Sharks, Whales and Where is My Foot?
It is often said they you can experience hell on earth. When I was 14 years old, I went to see Jaws on the Friday night it opened. In that same summer my mother had been granted use of her employer’s condo in Ft. Lauderdale for one week. We arrived one day after my dreams of being an oceanographer were dashed by the wailing and gnashing of teeth. I don’t think Hell should be forever, but it would not bother me a bit if Steven Spielberg (The director of Jaws) and Peter Benchley (the author of Jaws) sat in a carnival dunk tank full of sharks for a 100 years. We would all get to throw copies of the book and old VHS tapes at the bullseye.
To this day I still cannot imagine anything more terrifying than that first day in the water. There is nothing else to do on that stretch of beach but go in the water, especially when it is 95 degrees in the shade. As soon as my toes hit the ocean, all I heard was the theme song from the movie beating through my bones. I was convinced that I would be chewed and thrown around like a dog's rope toy. Like all the girls in 9th grade, I prayed the sharks would find a skinny, pimply, white perogie looking teenager unattractive. This torture when on for days. It climbed to its peak when a swimmer a mile from us was bitten on the leg by a shark and nearly bled out. He was in the hospital and I was in Hell. It was like meeting the demons in the flaming pit as they handed out pitchforks while asking... "Would you like your pitch fork supersized?" The water is not clear in Ft. Lauderdale and like the bullet you don’t hear coming, a shark can leisurely swim to you. That experience was so scarring that, to this day, I feel I only narrowly avoided my destiny of being eaten. I still think that is how I am going to leave this earth. This is not a phobia; this is a vision of the future.
I have always imagined the Titanic sinking, the people in the freezing water, the cracking sounds, and the band that continued to play. I can see two sharks bobbing with their heads above the water and the one says to the other “Hey listen, they’re playing our song!” I imagine that several different species of sharks fed on cold cuts for days. Now don’t get all hot and bothered. The sinking took place 100 years ago; it is about time it is opened for humor. I am not writing about Columbine or the World Trade Center for heaven's sake. I still have never been able to come up with a Lincoln or Kennedy joke either, so for those sensitive ones out there, we have reached the high water mark.
I have always loved whales, killer whales in particular. Now what a bummer of a name. I mean we all kill something when we eat. Every one of us and everything that is alive so how they got to grab the title of killer, I am not sure. I always imagined a father killer whale teaching his little one about hunting. “Now, remember son, if the seal is broke, don’t open it”. I am always surprised when these beautiful beasties don’t eat their trainers at Sea Parks. I would eat anyone that kept me in a cement prison, whether I was hungry or not. I think it is horrible when a trainer gets hurt or killed. I have no doubt that they love these animals and always want them to be treated extremely well. I am just never surprised is all, I don’t think anyone is.
There is an estimate that 10 % of all plastic ends up in the ocean. Plastic bags look like jelly fish so Sperm Whales eat them. It is not enough that the book Moby Dick helped push these animals to the brink of extinction but now the question at the grocery store “Paper or Plastic” can contribute to the death of marine mammals.
I don’t know if you believe in evolution or not and it really doesn’t matter to me if you do but, let me suggest this…The mammals that took to the water had a pretty good idea of what was coming. They saw the future of the naked ape that would run around with spears and wipe out every animal it could. They took to the water as a formal retreat and were not too anxious to look back to shore. The penguins went to Antartica to get away. They even traded in their wings so on impulse they would not fly back.I am sure the invention of the diesel engine was a sad day for the entire ocean. What we have heard for the last 40 years as wonderful whale songs, which can travel thousands of miles, are actually nothing more than cries of mourning. It is a sad memory song of a peaceful life that is being taken away by books, movies and ignorance.
To this day I still cannot imagine anything more terrifying than that first day in the water. There is nothing else to do on that stretch of beach but go in the water, especially when it is 95 degrees in the shade. As soon as my toes hit the ocean, all I heard was the theme song from the movie beating through my bones. I was convinced that I would be chewed and thrown around like a dog's rope toy. Like all the girls in 9th grade, I prayed the sharks would find a skinny, pimply, white perogie looking teenager unattractive. This torture when on for days. It climbed to its peak when a swimmer a mile from us was bitten on the leg by a shark and nearly bled out. He was in the hospital and I was in Hell. It was like meeting the demons in the flaming pit as they handed out pitchforks while asking... "Would you like your pitch fork supersized?" The water is not clear in Ft. Lauderdale and like the bullet you don’t hear coming, a shark can leisurely swim to you. That experience was so scarring that, to this day, I feel I only narrowly avoided my destiny of being eaten. I still think that is how I am going to leave this earth. This is not a phobia; this is a vision of the future.
I have always imagined the Titanic sinking, the people in the freezing water, the cracking sounds, and the band that continued to play. I can see two sharks bobbing with their heads above the water and the one says to the other “Hey listen, they’re playing our song!” I imagine that several different species of sharks fed on cold cuts for days. Now don’t get all hot and bothered. The sinking took place 100 years ago; it is about time it is opened for humor. I am not writing about Columbine or the World Trade Center for heaven's sake. I still have never been able to come up with a Lincoln or Kennedy joke either, so for those sensitive ones out there, we have reached the high water mark.
I have always loved whales, killer whales in particular. Now what a bummer of a name. I mean we all kill something when we eat. Every one of us and everything that is alive so how they got to grab the title of killer, I am not sure. I always imagined a father killer whale teaching his little one about hunting. “Now, remember son, if the seal is broke, don’t open it”. I am always surprised when these beautiful beasties don’t eat their trainers at Sea Parks. I would eat anyone that kept me in a cement prison, whether I was hungry or not. I think it is horrible when a trainer gets hurt or killed. I have no doubt that they love these animals and always want them to be treated extremely well. I am just never surprised is all, I don’t think anyone is.
There is an estimate that 10 % of all plastic ends up in the ocean. Plastic bags look like jelly fish so Sperm Whales eat them. It is not enough that the book Moby Dick helped push these animals to the brink of extinction but now the question at the grocery store “Paper or Plastic” can contribute to the death of marine mammals.
I don’t know if you believe in evolution or not and it really doesn’t matter to me if you do but, let me suggest this…The mammals that took to the water had a pretty good idea of what was coming. They saw the future of the naked ape that would run around with spears and wipe out every animal it could. They took to the water as a formal retreat and were not too anxious to look back to shore. The penguins went to Antartica to get away. They even traded in their wings so on impulse they would not fly back.I am sure the invention of the diesel engine was a sad day for the entire ocean. What we have heard for the last 40 years as wonderful whale songs, which can travel thousands of miles, are actually nothing more than cries of mourning. It is a sad memory song of a peaceful life that is being taken away by books, movies and ignorance.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
The Big Bang Was a Dud
I still remember my adult cousin, on one fourth of July, leaning his head over an unexploded canister of fireworks. He should have lost his roman nose to the candle of the same name. This is the same man that built a machine that replicates old ornate plaster moldings for Victorian homes. He is not a dumb man. In fact, it was fairly clever how he smuggled the 3rd artillery into the back of his house without either of our wives knowing. Of course, once the colors crackle and pop across the sky, every one jumps on board with enthusiastic 'oohs' and 'aahs', regardless of the legality.
Don’t get me wrong. His early pyrotechnics education began with me. I am totally to blame for The Summers of the Burning, as we refer to it now. I started him off with matches a few summers before, then candles then small fire crackers, just enough to whet his appetite. He became hungry and as the summers grew more numerous, I would start fires in a 55 gallon barrel and then throw in cans of spray paint, blowing up the back yard with each one and with each time a different color redecorated the smoldering grass. One more summer passed and Molotov cocktails and arrows with burning heads were our daily fare. I taught him everything, but somewhere along the line, he forgot about safety.
The one leason I learned by being an adolescent pyro, was that everything that blows up has a cause. Anytime it was local it was me but what about the real big explosions? So with this young man's reflection, it occurred to me that the Big Bang, as a means of explaining the Universe, may be true but it also may be false. I have thought, for some time now, that it never happened. Of course, I was never going to write a paper on it since I am not equiped. I need grammar and spell check just to pull off this blog, let alone I would have to use more math than what is required to explain to my girlfriend why I religiously over draw the checking account. If you are bent to the religious, you may get excited, but don't. Nothing is more ridiculous than Moses' description of the beginning. The Big Bang never explained Creation, as some christians liked to claim.; in fact it , hands down, disproved it. The star and star stuff that would have come from the boom would have had to come on the first day, not the fourth, like the bible describes. (You can read this on page one of the book, not sure why so many have missed it)
Einstein believed that the universe was static, that it did not expand or contract. He put in a cosmological constant so his equations would work with this premise. Every time I tried to add something extra to my math equations, I got an F. The real genius of Einstein was he was able to do it and still get an A. Later, others took it out and showed that his work actually meant the universe was either expanding or contracting. That all that we know, see and can sense, started from a point of infinite density. Edwin Hubble (yep, the telescope guy) noticed that stars that are farther away have a red shift (we call this the Doppler Effect) and hence are moving away from us. The Big Bang theory was birthed from about this time, the 1930's. The problem is that around 1960 we noticed that the red shift was entirely unreliable as a means of determining distance . ( you may need to know a bit about quasars for this thought ) So how come no one knows anything about this?
Unlike me, who will try on a new idea like a new pair of socks, science moves slowly. It took 12 years for Einstein to be believed. Other than my dad’s tools and a few brain cells, I don’t have anything that is 12 years old. I usually don’t mind waiting a bit for something worthwhile but I really want to go to my grave with a better explanation than a large firecracker going off 15 billion years ago. The problem for us impulsive types is that science will wait because she is a patient mistress. A new theory or explanation has to present it's self and as of today, no one has come to the dance with a new date. So more than likely, I will live out my years like my cousin, blindly staring at the sky and wondering “What Happened?’
Don’t get me wrong. His early pyrotechnics education began with me. I am totally to blame for The Summers of the Burning, as we refer to it now. I started him off with matches a few summers before, then candles then small fire crackers, just enough to whet his appetite. He became hungry and as the summers grew more numerous, I would start fires in a 55 gallon barrel and then throw in cans of spray paint, blowing up the back yard with each one and with each time a different color redecorated the smoldering grass. One more summer passed and Molotov cocktails and arrows with burning heads were our daily fare. I taught him everything, but somewhere along the line, he forgot about safety.
The one leason I learned by being an adolescent pyro, was that everything that blows up has a cause. Anytime it was local it was me but what about the real big explosions? So with this young man's reflection, it occurred to me that the Big Bang, as a means of explaining the Universe, may be true but it also may be false. I have thought, for some time now, that it never happened. Of course, I was never going to write a paper on it since I am not equiped. I need grammar and spell check just to pull off this blog, let alone I would have to use more math than what is required to explain to my girlfriend why I religiously over draw the checking account. If you are bent to the religious, you may get excited, but don't. Nothing is more ridiculous than Moses' description of the beginning. The Big Bang never explained Creation, as some christians liked to claim.; in fact it , hands down, disproved it. The star and star stuff that would have come from the boom would have had to come on the first day, not the fourth, like the bible describes. (You can read this on page one of the book, not sure why so many have missed it)
Einstein believed that the universe was static, that it did not expand or contract. He put in a cosmological constant so his equations would work with this premise. Every time I tried to add something extra to my math equations, I got an F. The real genius of Einstein was he was able to do it and still get an A. Later, others took it out and showed that his work actually meant the universe was either expanding or contracting. That all that we know, see and can sense, started from a point of infinite density. Edwin Hubble (yep, the telescope guy) noticed that stars that are farther away have a red shift (we call this the Doppler Effect) and hence are moving away from us. The Big Bang theory was birthed from about this time, the 1930's. The problem is that around 1960 we noticed that the red shift was entirely unreliable as a means of determining distance . ( you may need to know a bit about quasars for this thought ) So how come no one knows anything about this?
Unlike me, who will try on a new idea like a new pair of socks, science moves slowly. It took 12 years for Einstein to be believed. Other than my dad’s tools and a few brain cells, I don’t have anything that is 12 years old. I usually don’t mind waiting a bit for something worthwhile but I really want to go to my grave with a better explanation than a large firecracker going off 15 billion years ago. The problem for us impulsive types is that science will wait because she is a patient mistress. A new theory or explanation has to present it's self and as of today, no one has come to the dance with a new date. So more than likely, I will live out my years like my cousin, blindly staring at the sky and wondering “What Happened?’
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