GOODBYE ERNIE (1998-2013)

Bump

Thanks, gb.

I'm really interested. How does one rationalize working an entire lifetime in the service of war criminals and terrorists?

Bump (this way I don't have to read anything)

I know how it feels. I lost my best friend my black cool lab.

Incidentally I keep meaning to find out what muslim/buddhist/hindu/jewish etc scriptures say about animals.
I know the Bible has some interesting stuff-

"God.. in whose hand is the soul of every living thing" (Job 12:10 KJV)

Jesus said:-"God won't forget the death of a sparrow" (Matt 10:29)

And to comfort a child who's grieving for a dead pet, it might be a good idea to tell them that even though we regard pets as belonging to us, they really belong to God, it's as if he lets us look after them for a little while and then calls them back to him because he misses them so much..
God said - "Every animal of the forest is MINE, and the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are MINE, for the world is MINE, and all that is in it" (Psalm 50 10-12)

I hear that the Americans and Brits wanted an Indian ocean base in the bad old Cold War days, so they took over Chagos Island and paid the 1000 islanders three-quarters of a million dollars to settle elsewhere, but there are lots of rumours and half-truths drifting around.
Somebody ought to do a good factual book or TV documentary about it to set the record straight once and for all.

What are you talking about?

Farmerman, I'm praying he doesn't write an explanation.

Yes, you've mentioned how you don't like to read, gb.

This is what Romeo was/is talking about, Farmer the academic.

John Pilger - Stealing A Nation 2004

I suspect you've got the people I was talking to on ignore, so of course you don't know..
Hey JTT- that video is a bit long, but i'll try to watch it sometime, but I can't stand that lefty pinko Pilger anyway and rarely trust a word he says..

oh, thanks for the heads up.

O dude.. i know what it means to lose a furry friend. In fact i lost my Rocky (brown lab) last week. He was such a friend!

sorry about Rocky. Was he ith you from a puppy?

The lady next doors ginger she-cat 'Skitz' died peacefully in its sleep on her lap a couple of days ago.
It was 20 yrs old and had a good innings, it was a well-known regular as it walked up and down our narrow cobbled lane and everybody used to stop to tickle it.
But since it died there's been a kind of greyness or 'negative vibes' hanging over the street and its affected everybody, just like kryptonite drains Superman, as if the old world ended when Skitz died, and a new more empty one began.
The lady invited me in to pay my respects, its body was in a box and my first thought was that the "real" cat wasn't in that body any more, its soul had flown, leaving just that empty body behind.
It was also a reminder that we all die one day, and that we're a little closer to the end of the road ourselves and our turn is coming.

But the feeling I felt most as I looked at the cobbled lane was that the cat wouldn't walk there again, not for a thousand trillion years and longer, and it reinforced my view that this material atoms-and-molecules earth counts for nothing in the grand scheme of things, it's just a place all living things pass through on their way to a better place..
"For we look at things unseen rather than the seen,for the seen are temporary,but the unseen are eternal" (2 Cor 4:18)

"We all circle the drain" Fman, 1:2:3

King David had a healthy attitude to death; he loved his son to bits and when the boy took seriously ill he was constantly at his bedside fretting, and people thought that if the boy died David would crack up completely.
The boy did die, but to everybody's amazement David took it in his stride-

"His attendants asked him, “Why are you acting this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat!”
He answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live.’
But now that he is dead, why should I go on fasting? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.” (2 Samuel 12:19-23)

That's been my attitude too when my parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, nephew, brother-in-law, a few friends and pets have died, I just think "Well that's it, they've gone and there's not a bleddy thing we can do about it", so why worry?

I had a dream a few months ago in which our fluffy grey cat 'Fred' put in a brief 5-second appearance, he looked at me with a happy expression and I looked at him and that was it.
Yet the amazing thing is that I hadn't seen him for 50 years, and even then we only had him for a short while before he vanished (it was rumoured he'd decided to move in with another family a mile away) and I'd hardly given him a thought since then.
So it's a mystery why he should pop up in my dream like that as if to say "Hi, how ya doing?"
Perhaps there's a bond between us and our pets (and deceased relatives and friends) that never breaks, I dunno?
It reminds me of an episode of Kung Fu which went like this-
MASTER PO- "Why do you look so unhappy Grasshopper?"
CARRADINE- "I was thinking of my dead parents Master"
PO- "They're just across the bridge"
CARRADINE- "What bridge Master?"
PO- "The bridge is your love for them, and their love for you, Grasshopper"