A Good Dog Will Save Your Life

(I tried to post this on Alt...but after 7 attempts and it STILL sitting unpublished after more than twelve hours...well, fuck them)

Some days are harder than others...and today was a very hard day.

(trust me when I say I know Hard Days)

My old dog died.

My old dog who helped me though a hell of a lot of Hard Days.

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She came into my life at a time when I had a lot of Sturm & Drang rocking my boat. She quite literally adopted me and attached herself to me. And I didn't mind a bit.

Any six week old dog that works as hard as she did to throw off her neglectful owners to come live with me deserves what she wants. I mean...a pup tiny enough to fit in the palm of my hand scales a fence, climbs a staircase and trundles throughout a house until she finds me and passes out exhausted next to my chair? Who the fuck am I to turn her away? That's determination and demands respect.

Many a night, when I pushed away sleep...she sat up with me and kept me level. Don't ever try and tell me dogs aren't intuitive and in tune with human emotions. I'll tell you to go shit in your hat. That dog provided a comforting presence...never asking for anything...just sitting there...peaceful, licking my hand...reminding me that the peace in a life interrupted by the violent and the tragic comes from the simple moments.

That's it, man. She gave me peace.

As we sat on our New Orleans porch and I sipped my beer and she crunched her ice cubes and the evening humidity enveloped us like velvet...she kept me grounded. At a time when I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to come all the way back home...that goddamned good dog gave me a peaceful focal point.
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And now she's gone. 13 and a half years is s good run for a dog. I'd prefer they have 20 or more years...but that's above my pay grade.

She'd been sick off and on for over a month. And overnight it got bad. I had her in the car...driving to the vet...her laying in the passenger seat...me driving one-handed...my other hand on her chest monitoring her vitals...

...when she passed. I felt her heart flutter...and stop. She gave a final sigh, put her head down and that was that. I pulled over three blocks from the vet's office and closed her eyes and wrapped her blanket a little more tightly around her. Then I continued on.
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That's all you can do...suck it up, ruck up, move out.

But I still feel like a mooring line has been broken.

R.I.P. my friend

Kelly

Nov 13, 1995 - May 9, 2009

Cleveland Rocks.....

Marmoset There's Be Days Like This

I just saw on the news that it's expected that in the year 2009 over 443,000 Americans will die from smoking related causes.

I gotta ask...why?

It's so beyond my ken why anyone born after 1970 or so would even start smoking.

There are easier, faster, less expensive and less painful ways to kill oneself.

I Wish I Could Sleep Like This





The kittens at 4 weeks.

Four of the five kittens now living in my house.

That Ol' Plagiarism Thingie

Since maybe just three or four people from the other place read this blog I can post on the plagiarism without a ridiculous pissing contest ensuing. And believe me...my first thought was to bust them and make a big deal in a vindictive way because the perpetrator is an obnoxious ass.

There are two actually...they have a couple's profile but the male half also has his own. The offending blog is in the couple's name (look up Baby Girl in Grubby and VA daddy Dom 64). They showed up in the blogs about a week ago and immediately began being total trolls. They began telling people what and what not to post in blogs, attacking views belligerently, making personal attacks, making threats of violence, etc, etc, etc. You know the drill.

At first I thought they were the "agent provocateur" type of troll who only pretend to be dim and angry to stir up reactions...like Andy Kaufman used to do with his wrestling shtick. Their posts were just so...well, nearly illiterate. You really had to focus to make sense of what they were attempting to say. And they took any answer to their comments as a challenge and made threats. And then the racism started.

Yeah...both sides of the couple are proud and vocal racists. A typical comment went along the lines of Obama will never be elected because "it's called the White House!"

They were so ridiculous I was certain they couldn't be for real. They seemed to be forcing a severe stereotype...I was sure it had to be a character.

Now I'm not so sure.

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This is from their blog:


"There are 107 "Historically Black" colleges whose fundamental blackness must be preserved in the name of diversity, but all historically white colleges must be forcibly integrated, to resist being labeled racism."

And this:


"More & more the Obama campaign is using violence,vandalism and intimidation as its unofficial standard operating procedure. Violence and corruption seem to go hand-in-hand with african American politics. Stories of massive vote fraud by the liberal activists group ACORN have made the news this week,and now Obama's followers seem to be getting increasingly intolerant of free speech and in some cases violent as election day nears."

This first is just one section of several take from an article...

WHAT IS RACISM? by Thomas Jackson {Originally Published in American Renaissance, Vol 2, No. 8}

Which can be found in whole....on David Duke's website. Yeah, that David Duke...former Grand Wizard of the KKK. Did I mention that the male half of this couple has said on several blogs that he's writing in Duke for President this year?

The second bit of text is one of several paragraphs taken word for word and dropped into the middle of another of their blog posts...again no quotes, no citation, no different font or text color...none of the usual things that demonstrate that something is not your own writing....taken from an article on extremely right wing, anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, white supremacy site altermedia.info:

http://us.altermedia.info/news-of-interest-to-white-people/obama-campaign-using-violence-and-intimidation_3839.html

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And so on.

In none of these instances do they mention they are using outside sources. They just cut and paste and weave them into their own racist rants. Most of what they've written so far is plagiarized.

It's obvious as well. When they comment on blogs they really are hard to follow...and amusing in a way some insanely, aggressively maniacal people are. For example...this is typical of their commenting:

"Stay in yankee land loser,& BTW get a real tattoo. Racist,fail to see the problem there guy. Its the WHITE HOUSE & allways will be. Guess you & all the loudmouth Leftest assholes who NEVER serverved a day in your life are allways the ones who run your mouths. Go figure there KEYBOARD RAMBO,BTW My invitatation still stands in real time there sunshine KEYBOARD RAMBO.Barack Hussein Obama a black muslim name,BTW a muslim mole to infiltrate? Go watch CNN ya asshole loser."

It's becoming more difficult to find these choice nuggets since so many people are deleting and/or banning this couple. I guess that's why they started their own blog...to combat alt's "Leftest agenda." (sic) Which is funny because their earliest comments were telling people to stop posting about politics....and to stop censoring the right wing (I guess they knew they'd be so obnoxious as to get banned time and again? Because they made the accusations, obviously, before anyone banned them) while in their own blog they have it set to approve comments...which they don't and leave them hidden in pending.

When their own blog thoughts became coherent...my bullshit RADAR turned on. So I checked in Google...and sure enough...cut and paste idiocy.

So you can see why I wanted to but them...just out of spite for their sheer obnoxiousness.

But I have to admit....they are kinda fun to watch. I wouldn't think so if they were in any way in danger of making a valid and coherent albeit wrong-headed point. But they are just so confused (that's another thing...they can't seem to remember who've they tussled with and keep mixing people up...and belligerently insisting they have the right person...hilarious) and aggressive and vile and comically inept.

Gah. I updated the template for this blog and it screwed up all my links and some other stuff. If you see that I am no longer linking to your blog...it wasn't me...it was the system, man.

I have to rebuild the list now.

I Suppose I Should be Flattered



Out of idle curiosity I spent some time seeing who had been to my various blogs, how they found it (if not a regular or alt refugee), etc. I found one address who had been to my Desert Storm related blog multiple times...so I did some backtracking...and discovered they had found it via a google image search.



It's a teacher in another state who was making a web page on the history of Desert Shield/Storm for his grade school students.



And he used three of my photos on the page.



Which sort of baffles me...because almost all my pics are mundane and sort of dull. If you look around the web, the DS memorial or bio pages...the photos are so very, very similar. In fact, many are much more exciting, dramatic and demonstrative than my few surviving ones. He could have used any number of the thousands of the pics available online. But three of the five were plucked from my blog. Weird.

I guess it might be flattering...that some very young kids will be learning about a short, nasty and mostly eclipsed war and their visuals of it will include the image of my sad, filthy little sand filled tent.

From the No Shit, Sherlock files:

Clay Aiken came out as gay. Access Hollywood TV celebrity-themed show goes into breathless histrionics.

Next week it will be announced that water is wet.

I'd be Lying...

...if I said pictures like these....

didn't drive me absolutely insane with lust...

In Literary News....

This has me bummed...

"US authors have been paying tribute to writer David Foster Wallace, who was found dead at his home in Claremont, California, on Friday night.

The 46-year-old hanged himself at his home, police said.

Wallace, best known for 1996 novel Infinite Jest, first gained praise for his offbeat humour with 1987 debut The Broom of the System.

In 1987, the New York Times said the then-24-year-old's Broom of the System was "a portrait, through a combination of Joycean word games, literary parody and zany picaresque adventure, of a contemporary America run amok".

His biggest hit, Infinite Jest - set in an elite tennis academy and a drug rehabilitation centre - was praised by critics for its complex, dark wit and featured in many best-of lists.
Wallace, born in Ithaca, New York, also wrote short fiction, published in magazines including GQ, Esquire and Harper's.

Three collections of his short stories - Girl With Curious Hair, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and Oblivion: Stories - were also published. "

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I was a big fan of his...even though at times some of his writing made me roll my eyes (sometimes he tried to hard to be different and his writing came off very mannered) I still appreciated his wit.

I find myself wondering if his suicide note had several pages of footnotes .

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And this has me happy...

Children's author Eoin Colfer has been commissioned to write a sixth instalment of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series.

Mostly Harmless, the last Hitchhiker book, was written by its creator, the late Douglas Adams, 16 years ago.

Now Adams's widow, Jane Belson, has given her approval to bring back the hapless Arthur Dent in a new book entitled And Another Thing...

Eoin Colfer, 43, is best known for the best-selling Artemis Fowl novels.
He said he was "terrified" by the prospect of creating a new Hitchhiker book almost a quarter of a century after being introduced to what he described as a "slice of satirical genius" in his late teens.

Visual Representation of The Bush Doctrine:

A Handy Learning Tool for Sarah Palin.

Because I'd rather have two or three people I know will read and sign rather than 500 people read and do nothing....

From an IAVA mailing....

With your help, we're holding the presidential candidates accountable.
With 53 days left until the election, the stakes couldn't be higher for our country's 1.7 million veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and their families. Thousands of Americans have signed IAVA's open letter, asking Senators Obama and McCain to pledge that they will make veterans' issues a top priority when they reach the White House.

Can you take a minute to add your name?

Over the past two weeks, IAVA took our message of putting veterans first on the road to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. IAVA is non-partisan and does not endorse political candidates, but we brought member veterans from across the country to tell convention delegates and guests about the most critical issues facing our country's newest generation of heroes.

IAVA will continue to work in Washington, DC and across the country on behalf of our newest generation of veterans. Can you help us out by adding your name to the petition to the candidates?

Yesterday, Senators Obama and McCain put political bickering aside and came together in remembrance of September 11, 2001. Just as patriotism rose above partisanship then, we can unite now to honor our nation's veterans.

Together we can move beyond political rhetoric and work to ensure that no matter who our next President is, veterans' issues remain part of the national dialogue. Be sure to forward this email to your friends and family.

Thank you.
Sincerely,
Paul Rieckhoff
Iraq Veteran
Executive DirectorIraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

P.S. The presidential candidates aren't the only politicians we're holding accountable. In the next few weeks, IAVA Action will be releasing our 2008 Congressional Report Card, grading members of Congress on their votes on key veterans legislation. As soon as it's posted, we'll let you know how to check your lawmakers' scores.

A Case of The Crazies

It's kind of good that the hardcore, far right fringe, uber conservative crowd at alt tend to congregate in just 3 or 4 blogs. Their insular nature makes it easier to keep an eye on them. And laugh at them...and occasionally shake your head in wonder that people really think this way...

These come from the same woman (taken from the blog of alt's resident Zionist and poll taker):

I would go with other, since half of America wants handouts, free money taken from others, what they can do, own and even eat controlled by the Government, and what others can do, own and even eat controlled by the Government as well. They want the current far left type leaders who are not unlike Hitler or Stalin in social and economic policies. The other half of America still has some idea of freedom, though to different degrees, ranging from those of us who want small Government, to those who like Shrub and McCain and are borderline being like theier fellow Liberals who want the above. It is kind of sad to see so many sell their freedom so cheap for Socialist Progressive Politically Correct shackles made to look like handouts. The dream is still here for some of us though, so Happy 4th of July and God Bless America and all the other Nations that are free because of the USA.

and...

Ok, from the point of view of someone who spent time laerning how criminals deliver BS, I am under the opinion that this was a setup and Jackson nt only knew he was being taped, but was in on duping idiots on the Right as well as Left. First off, Obama has been loosing ground with Whites due to his close friends' and Wife's anti-White views. How does he and his people (his press people) get the Whites to stop seeing him for a possible anti-White Racist? Stage an event where a prominent Black figure, calls him anti-Black and shows anger towrd Obama for not just being a Pro-Black leader. Now, the media plays up Jessie as wrong and Jessie says sorry. Let's face it, he has no credibility outside the Black Racist community anymore anyway, so it does not hurt him to play the part of angry Black in order to make Obama not appear to be the same type of Racist, Jessie is.

I'm not saying Obama is Racist, though he certainly looks it from the company he keeps. I actually think he is a Liberal Elitist and a Marxist instead (or to a greater degree), who looks down on the White Working class, not due to Race, but because he sees them as dumb sheep stupid enough to believe in a God and to hold the idea that they should stand up on their own, rather than as Government held todlers.

Still, Jackson's words ring hollow to me and I firmly believe that this was a staged event to draw idiots into seeing Obama as somehow not tied to Black Racist, such as his former Church, Wife and frienmds/advisors. In the short term it appaers to be working, as so many on the Right and in the Middle seem to now think Obama is not still tied to those he called friends who are Racist. From the start I have said that my problem with Obama and even Hillary have nothing to do with Race or Sex, and instead have to do with both being damn near Commies in their ideology.

Too many have made Race a pro or negative thing in this campaign as a smoke screen to delay the average American from hearing the extreme views of Obama. It is a good tactic and one I think the Liberals will use against any who bring up Obama's voting record, or his policies should he be elected. They will call you a racist if you disagree, even if you have facts showing how his leftist views and actions are not good for the Nation. It worked for Commies elsewhere, it will here too. Jessie is just another example of how it can.

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