Set, given that I work at home, the wife always thinks I'm f---ing the dog, but of course, I didn't intend for 'fancy' to be taken that way, sort of like 'horror'....hee!
Ah, thanks darlin', ye've lightened my afternoon, so . . .
I laughed aloud . . .
An i hope ye'll get yer wee kitty soon, none should be without those whom they love . . .
Sorry, Cav, i'm a bad man when it comes to the cheap joke, the quick pun, the shot from the goofy hip . . . i can't resist some temptations . . .
No problem there, I responded in character.
Sorry. Just couldn't help saying it.
heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee . . .
I for one will offer a serious thought on personal horror here, in a commando-like effort to get the thread to it's proper place, although at this point, a new one is most likely in order.
Horror: Watching my beloved grandmother (on my mother's side) die of cancer in the hospital. Hospitals are not my favorite places to begin with, but we were there, the family, by her bedside, for a week as things started to really unravel. One afternoon, slipping in and out of a morphine-induced stupor, she started shaking uncontrollably and yelled to god: "Take me! Take me!" over and over. We were ushered out of the room, and I completely broke down. The image of her dilapidated body in that state, combined with the love I had always held for her was something I don't think I will ever get over. That picture is forever burned into my memory. I am lucky that I am young enough to have never had to go to war. My grandfather on my father's side was a WWII medic. Despite the Jewish family prodding of "be a doctor", I never had the stomach for it. Admitting that I couldn't accept a career path that could have helped others like my grandmother (who had she been diagnosed properly in the first place may have been treatable) is my personal horror.
Thank you for that offering, Boss . . . those things are not easily rehearsed . . . i wept so badly the first time i typed a description of my grandfather's death, that i could barely see the keys to continue . . . and that was nearly 40 years after the event . . .
Cav get's a star, for first class posting:
Feeling a little too intimidated to post here, even though I have some thoughts on the subject ...
Feeling a little fragile today & don't want to find that I've completely missunderstood the topic.
Just call me a chicken!
Maybe tomorrow?
Don't be afeerd, lil' kitty, i'll not hurt ye . . .
Its a tough job but somebody will have to start editing your posts 'for flow and clarity' What you celebrate as a facility with the language, i for one see as a return to the Victorian school of "fine writing"
If you wish to get to the barn though the bathroom , I cant stop you, but id suggest you ask directions some time. many mortals (maybe Im the only one, so ok not so many) would like to have your main point gotten to in OUR LIFETIME.
Your original post sounded, to me, like sincere alarm at your dogs reaction to lightning as a carry-over from her years of mistreatment.
Since you rather use her condition as a mere metaphor, hmmm. I guess I can see that now, its just not a great set of lead-ins. (You would drive an editor to the top shelf stuff)
if you read my bios here and abuzz (well not so on abuzz anymore since bios have been used to screw with well intentioned posts by some really strange people over there) you will see that I am a complete unapologetic animal nut. I once posted a thread asking for Possum recipes because we had just taken in a baby one i was excoriated by others until they learned it was in jest. I learned that , no-matter whats in our own heads. No matter how we think we are so cleverly wording our posts, many people wont get it because you arent there with the body language and just the right delivery. Assume youre selling something and give yourself maybe 15 seconds to make the sale, otherwise youll be doing what youre doing now,back pedalling and explaining what we were supposed to get from this in the first place.
Im not angry, far from it. I love to see just how far we can go in the spirit of honest disagreement without crossing the lines like that Mr whatsisname a few weeks ago, who got close to threatening a "family" member. That was , in retrospect, just poor communication skills set in a matrix of National Socialist rhetoric.
AS for correcting my posts for either spelling or punctuation, feel free, no pride of authorship here. My laptop has cembolom keys and Im a hammer bass player. So Im always mooshing up the correct spelling and punctuation.I also have a habit of creating dipthongs that dont exist in the english language that most of us are familiar with because certain keys lie next to each other and both get struck by my size 13 fingers. However.. The cleverer people quickly recognize this and like dealing with Om sig Davids, unique spelling, they get by just fine.
Now to call me a total utilitarian when it comes to animals, there was a poem by Robert Service about having to put a dog down in a North Woods refuge camp in order to save himself. it was a heart breaker and a lament by a woodsman who had his sled team attrited. So yes, my dogs work for a living. Theyare fullfilling what is hard wired in them. The Border Collie and the Catahoula each doesnt make a great pet because they bond exclusively to me and further, they get bored too easily. They need stimulation by me so that they dont try to have my position recalled.
Please, in the future
When you try writing parables, dont talk about dogs and animals to set up your line, cause , when I see, pain, suffering , animal, i want to help.I see nothing else
However, having said that, i dont see animals on an equal plane as humans, because I feel, i have a moral obligation to first help a humanwho is in a bad way. Even if it means sacrifice of one of my beloved dogs.Many of those dogs at theWTC were in a bad physical condition as a result of their duty, but they were trained to be "rescue" dogs and they did their jobs . noone hesitated to send them into harms way because they were weighing their lives against those trapped inside.
That is my opinion , and my ethical bent, i will even want to help an enemy who is sick or hurt, and if my doggies have to be martyrs, it is for a good cause and in their little minds they would only see this act astheiri job and their job is their only imperative. Now Im not a religious person, far from it. i believe that the chance comingling and bonding of chemicals was the the start of everything . My morals are grounded in the belief that all life is precious, but some lives are more precious than others.
If anyone is willing to take my word for it you won't have to re-read Jack London.
He had a low opinion of all life. Saying that it's natural to only value your own.
I am getting miffed here, and I am only on page 4.
(I would ask you, Farmer, to read this as though someone you know well sat opposite you, and spoke calmly, without rancor, without sneers, but emphatically trying to communicate to you a strong difference of opinion.)
I don't feel that your criticism of my original post is valid. One of our posters managed to take my meaning quite well, without the body language, eyes, gestures, etc., which make conversation more amenable to irony, metaphor, and humorous sarcasm. But that post is not written in that manner. I converse very voluably in these fora, and adopt an appropriate style when doing so. That was not a conversational post. I have also mentioned that i spoke of three different animals in that post, and that i had not posted it in the Pets thread, because that was not the subject of the thread. I've now gotten some other very pertinent responses to the topic of Horror, one here, and one in another thread, which i had set up to lampoon what i'd done here. That so many ignored the story of the rabbit and the ground squirrel and focused on the dog is simply in my eyes evidence of the extent to which dogs (and cats as well) are so fully integrated into our society, that the distinction between the love people feel for the animals in their lives and that felt for other people is nugatory. As one of our members did automatically take my meaning and respond in a very germaine manner suggests to me that what you see as rambling perroration and i consider to have been subtlety in aid of making a blunt and possibly callous question more palatable, as well as perhaps enjoyable--was not totally a failure. In fact, i am still pleased with what i wrote, and feel that it fits the bill of what i intended quite well.
I had considered going to get quotes of the things you wrote which i found very offensive, but it's not worth it. I will note that you made a series of remarks impugning my writing style, to which i took offense, and from which i inferred a lack of the ability on your part to extract the message from literary subtlety--a charge which may well not be merited, but it is understandable how someone who is offended will react in such a manner. When you also wrote of my "tendency," you were making a blanket condemnation, which can in no way be mitigated to appear not to have been a sharp poke in the ribs. Like so many in this world who are as imperfect as i will admit to being, when poked, i poke back, and try to poke back harder. When i combined those reflections with the assumptions you made--unwarranted assumptions--about how i view animals, and how i feel about humans, i was ready to poke hard and repeatedly.
I don't concern myself with whether dogs or humans have a spirit--i consider it speculative to the point of being a non-question. I consider dogs to be very intelligent indeed. The behavior of dogs on a scent trail is evidence of a higher-order ability to process information, and leads me to reject any claim that they are "hard-wired." It is as necessary to understand how dogs react to their world as it is not to anthropomophize. If you sit at a table doing something with your hands, dogs have sufficient wit to understand from your postures and movement, familiar to them from exposure, that these indicate that you are manipulating the environment, an acitivity which fascinates them, and one which they know can produce food--but it is not only the prospect of food which draws their interest, they are naturally curious about the world which they inhabit--more evidence of intellecual engagement with their surroundings. They might jump up, or "climb" your leg to know what goes on. You can show them, and when you show them, you need to show it to their nose, as they rely on sight for spatial information and motion-detection, but rely upon the sense of smell to give them detailed information about their world. When i've sat at a table and rolled cigarettes, it has usually attracted the attention of dogs when any are present. I need only reach down with a paper filled with tobacco to the level of the dog's nose, and they will react as though a person were to say: "Oh, that, ok, i just wondered what you were doing"--and then go about whatever business happens to interest them at the time. When i buy groceries and am in company with Lovey's dogs, i will hold the bags at their nose level, so that they can "see" what i've gotten, and they immediately calm down, and take up "guard the food" positions as we head for home. In fact, her elder dog, Mr. Bailey, is so fond of doughnuts, that if you come out of Coffee Time with a bag, and let him smell the contents, if anyone approaches, he begins to bark furiously at them, to warn them off. He only does this with doughnuts--he's wary about anyone approaching when i'm carrying ordinary groceries, but doughnuts are a different case altogether. I won't sit here all night to recount the many subtleties of canine behavior which i have observed--i will simply reiterate that the concept that dogs are "hard-wired" is one i consider both wrong and demeaning to the dog.
I consider that a far greater proportion of the human race is--and saddly so, as it needn't be that way--not worth the powder necessary to blow them to hell, than i would ever consider the case when it comes to dogs. Were i in a situation in which i could save a dog by letting a man die, or let them both die, i'd save the dog. If i were in a situation in which i could save a man, and let the dog die, or let them both die, i'd save the man. Were i in a situation in which i could save the dog, or the man, but not both--i'd have to give that some serious thought, and would likely base my decision upon my estimation of the character of the man, as i've met few "bad" dogs in my life--and those were the obvious products of abuse or the sickening practice some observe of intentionally making dogs vicious. Perhaps you consider me a traitor to my species, but i think that the most of them are as expendable as dogs. That does not indicate a desire on my part to see them "expended," simply a statement to reassert that i see no appreciable qualitative difference in the value of human as opposed to canine life. It might comfort you to simply view me as hopelessly short-sighted for that opinion, if so, i pray you do so.
Finally, i would note that your second excursion into literary criticism was as unnecessary as your first--and delivered with considerably more acidity. I'll make you a deal--i'll take no notice of your appallingly poor writing ability in terms of simple textual clarity, and you can have the courtesy to bear with my perrorations, which please and amuse me, as much as you remain indifferent to producing a clearly readable text, seemingly being equally pleased with that. I've responded to you with honesty now, and i hope haven't thrown out any cheap shots, other than my above remarks about your writing style--you earned that way back in this discussion. I've done so, because, having delivered your snide remarks about my writing, you then settled into a civilized set of remarks. I will add the final caveat that i've done no backpedalling, and that as i was never selling anything, i'm not taken with your advice about timing, and intend to ignore it as heartily in the future as i have always done when i've heard that sort of criticism. This is not for publication, what people write here is for fun, or practice, or to fulfill a percieved need to expression oneself--so, no cheap shots about how i write, and i'll take none about how you write.
Craven, i've often enjoyed London's writing, and will observe that i believe you've summed him up succinctly.
I suppose you will all roll your eyes when I say I have enjoyed this thread, and now, after a half hour ago or so questioning what another thread is doing on Pets and Garden...fully understand how it got there.
I will start by rambling, my natural mode. I write and react to my own writing, wending my way into obscurantism, on which, Farmer, I once kept a tongue in cheek scientific paper for years.
Well, right off I am pissed at all the dissing going on on a2k threads of various kinds, dissing that always has a sidebar of ...take it to Pets and Garden, that soft landing, pillowed resting place. I have seen that three times this week, or it seems like this week. Pets and Garden is what people make it, plenty of room for roiling debate there.
I was surprised myself at the vehemence of Setanta on nobody getting the key
point, but that was in part because I...coming here late...didn't have the Clue that you all did, the title. Instead I get the Horribly Gone Wrong Unintentional Pet Thread. (Hmmm, my own pet was not intended, the day I found him.)
I think the lead in was quite long for the punch line, which was a thoughtful and quiet, slightly obscure comment.
I have known dogs can behave with genuine friendship.. Not to go on and on, I can see that they are more than hard wired. And sometimes we humans certainly seem hard wired to recreate predictable follies.
I am not sure at all who I would rescue if it came to it, a dog about to be run over and a seven year old human running into the street. Let us hope it doesn't come to that. I will say with a cough the seven year old. But I have my share of human horror too, and do know that the waves of it that come up to mind when the veils part...can hardly be borne.
Well, i'm gonna give another shot . . .
Hey Setanta, don't get yer bunjies in a nunch.
And might go further...I, like Dlowan, have observed my own speed of sensitivity to the animal in trouble. Tears and stress are immediate. And I have wondered if my priorities are skewed. Well, I don't know, really. But there is another possibility, and that is that the connection to animals, yes, squirrel and rabbit and cat and dog, and hey, I now have turtle friends, is a quick start to our own hearts, which are so hardened to human's continuing willful obnoxiousness, and much worse, behavior. In fact that connection may be part of a heart's opening.
