Dog Is My Stinky Co-Pilot
last year I visited the Creation Museum. Every time someone said god created man from the dust of the earth, I’d yell “I didn’t come from no dirt!” ~borrowed from a comment thread at Pharyngula
Our greyhound stinks. I mean really stinks. Like an old man whose wife has died and now, without anyone to prod him into basic hygiene, rarely bathes or washes his clothes. (For some reason, I always get stuck behind these smelly old fuckers in line at the grocery store.)
A bath might help, but Aries, being old and fragile, makes like the Wicked Witch and melts in the shower. I.e., he falls over and can’t get up. So there he is lies, on his comfy bed in the living room, stinking up the place. Certain times a day, his basic D.O. is accentuated with Eau d’Fart.
Gheri, on the other hand, though blind and deaf, and giving Methuselah a run for his money, can still be bathed. It just doesn’t happen very often. This morning, after I got up to fed the horse and then returned to bed and our dog-reeking bedroom, I decided at least one dog shouldn’t smell like a kennel.
The “easiest” way to wash Gheri is to chuck her in the shower with me. At first, the whole enterprise seems pretty straightforward and I wonder, “Why didn’t I do this weeks ago?” I wash my hair and bits and pieces and then move on to the Rat Dog.
First, getting the Rat wet (She’s been standing in my rain shadow the whole time and is thus far, just damp.) Scoop little beast up and get her good and wet in the shower spray. She snorts, grumbles and chirps indignantly, but accepts the procedure. Next. Switch the water off and lather up the dog.
Here’s where the fur starts to fly. After a few minutes of scrubbing (with cruelty free shampoo, cuz as I’ve said before, I love the irony), she starts letting loose clumps of hair the way a porcupine lets fly quills. Every time she shakes, big, black clots of hair fly off her and stick to every surface of the shower. Including me. I end up with dog hair in all sorts of unmentionable places.
By the time the bath ends, we’re standing in a pond caused by clog of dog hair in the drain. (Naturally, I leave the mess for Justin, under the auspices that he’s been complaining about the stinky little terrier.) At this point, I am reacquainted with my many reasons for not washing the Rat Dog.
But now it’s time for the drying ritual. First, she flings her wet self on the bathroom floor, and squirms around on the floor leaving a trail of hair. “Lookit all that hair. You should be bald by now,” I observe as I scoop her up in a towel. More grumbles and chirping while I start the towel drying. Next is time with the hair dryer. At this point, she’s well and bored with the whole business. She alternate between flinging herself on the carpet and squirming and trying to make a break for it. In the past, the second option was a lot more irritating, but nowadays, the little blind creature just bumps into something. Like a Rumba vacuum, she turns around and heads the other way. Usually, this keeps her in the area for a while until she finds an escape route.
The whole ordeal takes at least 45-minutes and I vow–like I always do–”Next time, I’m taking you to PetsMart where their groomers can torture you.”
When we’re done, she develops a desperate need to go outside, where she makes a beeline for her favorite spot, a patch of dirt where the sun will bake out all the vile shampoo smell.
Estimated time she will stay clean. About a day. Tops.
Needed, One Large Bucket
Oh, honestly, won’t somebody stuff Hillary in a sack with a boulder and drop her in a river somewhere? The time has come.
While chatting with my mother the Texas democrat–yes, there are democrats in Texas–I mentioned this lovely blog posting over at DailyKos. (It should be noted, that as of late, Kos has become an Obama-only blog. Seems all the Hillary supporters, miffed by the lack of adulation their candidate received at the blog, took their toys and went home. Snerk.) The writer (an atheist) of this particular diary once worked for Reverend Wright.
He preached that no-holds-barred, do-the-right-thing, eye-for-an-eye stuff that is so hard to live up to, but was for him the only acceptable way to live. Dr. Wright did not turn me into a black militant. But he did turn me into a white atheist who spent a lot of time thinking about what it might be like to grow up as a black man in the America he knows. He helped me to wear those shoes, at least for a little while, and he tried to wear mine.
Imagine my surprise a week ago, when there he was, in all his Pentecostal glory, on the TV, saying “God Damn America!” What could have made him say such a thing? Maybe it was the segregated bathrooms, restaurants, hotels, busses, trains, and planes. Or was it the dogs? The fire hoses? the billy clubs? The nooses? Or maybe it was serving in the Marines, and coming home to be spit on and denied even the pretense of equality, in a country where the watchword was “Know your place.”
There are links to Reverend Wright’s “offensive” sermons in the diary. Justin, my hunka-burning-love-atheist, watched both sermons, and noted that the media, by only playing snippets, the inflammatory snippets, has, as usual, provided the usual skewed (and racist) slant. Watching the entire sermons is enlightening.
On a different tangent, like a good little atheist, I’ve been enjoying how poorly received the movie Expelled has been (except by mouth breathers who think God is some kind of super-duper Dumbledore who “poofed” the world into existence.) Julia Sweeney’s blog has a cute response to the creationist propaganda that is “Expelled,” in which she notes that Ben Stein is a IDiot.
I really like this bit about the stupidity that is the Idiot Design / Evolution “debate.”
To be honest, this shouldn’t even be something that is even being debated. It only continues to be in the public discourse at all because of the lack of sophisticated science education amongst the general public, coupled with groups who have a vested interest in keeping people confused on these matters, mixed with a darker push from elected officials (and some judges and those in power, funded by the more conservative religious groups) who use issues like this to rile people up and make the more complicated, truer view of life’s nature and origins seem as though it’s a debate between those who are moral and good and those who are cruel and heartless. So that when people skim the issue it appears as though those people (on the side of God) are the moral and just ones. They’re nicer. Cause, y’know, they believe in God. They are “open” to a God implanting and guiding life to it’s crowning glory, human beings! ARGH.
Argh, indeed.
We’ve received a few mailing about “Expelled” showings at the church. Which I shredded. Which, isn’t all that unusual–except for the shredding. You would not believe the amount of junk mail that the church gets. Most of it is just junk, and some of it might encourage the elders to spend money we don’t have, so I chuck most in the recycle bin. (The current meme is Narnia-related merchandising.) Anything IDiot Design related, however, wins a trip through the shredder.
It’s so satisfying to watch the metal teeth devour Ben Stein’s face.
Cheers,
P.K.
Hee Haw
Mayor Marty “I’ve never passed up a chance to waste taxpayers’ money” Chavez is an ass. No, not a jackass. I live right next door to a little herd of donkeys and I can assure you, they are superior, intellectually and morally, to Albuquerque’s mayor.
Ass, as in “asshole.” Mirroring the desperation of Hillary Clinton, like a good little minion, he’s whining about Gov. Richardson’s endorsement of Obama. At this point, you can smell the desperation of the Hillary camp from space. What iota of respect I had for HRC has evaporated in the hot air given off by her campaign. (As of late, she’s still flogging the “Obama’s pastor is a scary black man, so, uh, guilt by association,” meme.) If she steals the nomination, I guess I’ll have no choice but to vote for her. But it’ll go way beyond holding my nose and voting. I’ll need a HAZMAT suit to cast that vote.
Meanwhile, Huckabee, of all people, actually said something reasonable regarding the Wright fiasco. Who-da-thunk it?
And one other thing I think we’ve gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say “That’s a terrible statement!”…I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told “you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus…” And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.
MIKA: I agree with that. I really do.
Wright is Right
So the media, like a pack of melanin-obsessed dogs, has leaped on Reverend Wright’s, Obama’s pastor, sermons, proving, once and for all that racism is alive and well in the U.S.A.
What? It doesn’t? Really? So why haven’t we heard much about McCain’s best buddy, Hagee the Hateful. Nary a peep from the media about the Hagee/ McCain lovefest. Guess pudgy, white preachers always get a pass when it comes to hate.
But if a black man has the audacity to speak what is essentially the truth, in a loud scary voice, expect a media firestorm. Unlike Hagee, Robertson, and all the other hate mongers, Wright has a point.
America is run by rich, white men. And we do meddle, stirring up ant hills and then whining when we get stung.
Wright’s comments are incendiary because the truth hurts. (Unlike the kind of stupidity that usually comes from preachers, asserting that the gays and abortion caused 911 or the flooding of New Orleans.)
The question is whether this will give the closet racists a reason not to vote for Obama. Will they whine, “He hates America,” and vote for Hillary, thus assuring McBush the presidency?
Election ‘08, never a dull moment.
See You in Hell
From the people who brought you the Spanish Inquisition and “pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth,” –i.e. The Catholic Church–comes a new list of fun things to do, erm, …seven social sins.
The seven social sins, as per Pope Ratzy are:
1. “Bioethical’ violations such as birth control
2. “Morally dubious” experiments such as stem cell research
3. Drug abuse
4. Polluting the environment
5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
6. Excessive wealth
7. Creating poverty
I’ve always thought Catholics lived in their own special kind of Bizarro World. Growing up in a largely Hispanic neighborhood, I was surrounded by Catholics. (It wasn’t until high school, that I realized that there were even wackier Xians out there–evangelical Christians.) But the thing I’ve found most striking about Catholics is their loyalty to team Catholic, even when they follow so few of the tenets of their religion. Take for instance birth control*, which a majority of American Catholics use despite the admonitions of their much revered Pope. Right now, thousands of dutiful Catholics are in the midst of Lenten-imposed sacrifice–”I gave up chocolate”–all the while taking their birth control pills or sliding on a condom. I guess the logic is, “I gave up beer for a month, thus distracting Jesus from the birth control patch stuck on my hip.”
There’s not much doubt my soul’s heading somewhere warm for the afterlife. And Hallelujah, because after this winter, I’ve had it with the cold.
1. “Bioethical’ violations such as birth control–Check. See I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. Since I’m a starving artist, I can’t afford to have a child. And if I did get pregnant, I’d have to make use of SCHIP monies or other government assistance to bring said child into the world and get him/her medical care, which would lead the Right Wing finger-wavers to scold me for having children I couldn’t afford. Course, if I spared the taxpayers and had an abortion, that would be even naughtier. But if I keep the happy little sperms from their rendezvous with the egg, I’m subverting God’s will. So, uh, fuck God’s will.
2. “Morally dubious” experiments such as stem cell research- Check. Well, no, I’ve never actually done stem cell research, but, like a majority of Americans I think the life of a ten-year-old boy with diabetes is much more important that a blob of cells in a petri dish.
3. Drug abuse-Check. If alcohol is a drug…
4. Polluting the environment-Check. (There’s a fart joke in here somewhere.) Anyone who drives a car is guilty of this one. Hope you like it hot, America.
5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor-Check. Sort of. I mean, if buying cheap shit made in China counts, then oh-boy, Hades here I come.
6. Excessive wealth-Check. Not rich. But I wish, which is Greed, so there you go.
7. Creating poverty . Well, to the best of my knowledge, no. It’s worth noting, however, that the Catholic church, via Sin Numero Uno (No birth control allowed), is itself guilty of Sin Number Seven.
*Actually, the birth control issue isn’t the most mind blowing example of the perversity of Catholic loyalty. That honour would have to go to the sex abuse scandals, and the apologetics and mental gymnastics that American Catholics will go to to explain why they give money to an organization that essentially sanctions pedophilia. It’s like they think their offering monies only go to the priests who keep it in their pants aren’t pedophiles. There are special Catholic accounting practices, apparently.
For Want of a Truck
My mom sent me this one. “For Want of a Truck” being one title. Alternately, given the image’s source, “Let’s Hear it for Cell Phone Cameras!” might be another.
A friend of hers snapped this in El Paso with a cell phone camera. The question therein being, “Who is the most dangerous? The guy sitting in the truck of a moving car, holding a dollie, which in turn holds a fridge, or, the guy taking pictures with his phone while driving? ” Seems like a toss up.
Cheers,
P.K.
