What Dicks Do....
I hate the dubya fuckers. Yup, they're fucking us over with their Midnight Regulations. I hate the fuckers that voted them into office, stupidly thinking that dubya and his dick would somehow serve America's best interests.
Speaking of dubya and his dick..... that's what dicks do. They fuck.
Labels: bush, corruption, dubya, environment, neocons, politics
Last Night's Dream
I had a dream last night. It was about Zuki, the Dusty Dog. I just keep reliving it, over and over. Fact is, I'm consciously trying to relive it. I am trying to remember every last detail about this dream. It's the only way that I can still feel like Zuki is with me. Sure, I have tons of photographs of her. I'm a photographer, after all. But, photographs only take me so far. They enable me to see her as she literally was. They enable me to remember how beautiful she was. They enable me to hold a piece of her forever in my heart.
But, dreams are different. Dreams, when vivid, carry along into the daytime an emotional thread that photos will never do. Granted, dreams distort that life she actually led. But, I don't care. It works for me.
I woke up with a piece of her, a piece of the emotional attachment that we had. And, that is a piece that is so hard to hold onto. It gets diluted over time, whether I want it to, or not. It becomes a memory that I will always and gratefully have, but absent some emotional impact. Maybe, I keep trying to hold onto that emotional impact of the day she died. Nothing is more emotional than that. Nothing. And, as painful as it is, it's a pain that I hold near and dear to my heart. It somehow keeps it a bit real for me.
I know that the same holds true for my brother who died May 3, 1978. That's a long time ago, but a day that I refuse to ever let go. It holds the emotion of my sadness that he died, but also the total love that we had. But, I digress. This article is about Zuki.
The dream was, as most dreams are, quite odd. I dreamed that she was physically disabled, as she was before she died. She was not able to get up on her own. She needed the help of a scarf tied around her rump. Her spinal stenosis robbed her of the strength to push herself up into a standing position. But once up, she could walk.
In the dream, I pulled her up, and she took off into a run with her best buddy, Luka, my friend's German Shepherd. This is where it gets odd. From the view of these two dog's rear ends, as I was running to catch up with them, it was obvious that they were both males; both were intact males. How odd is that? They were two beautiful male German Shepherds running down the street, past houses and other odd events.
Another dream oddness was the three WWII German soldiers who were struggling to fire some kind of archaic and damaged weapon, like a mortar gun, at the two dogs. They escaped the soldiers' efforts, and kept running down the street, me running behind them. And, that's when I woke up. I just stayed in bed, hoping to remember every single detail of the dream, including the houses they ran past and the street trees. That's all I can remember.
Zuki was a very special dog. She was a German Shepherd, but she also was part wolf. She was a human construct of an animal, a beast caught between two worlds. I rescued her from a no-kill shelter, being her fourth owner in her then short 1-1/2 years. She lived to be 7-1/2 years old, being ultimately struck down by a horrific disease that rendered her a quadriplegic, FCE. I already wrote about this in a
previous post, dated October 15, 2008.
I'm not sure why I'm writing this. Maybe it's cathartic. I think I just need this little photo blog article about her. Maybe, it's my way of keeping her "alive." I don't know. I'm not sure it matters. It just works for me.
Labels: death, Dusty Dog, German Shepherd, grief, GSD, photography
Seasons Greetings, with a Dash of Hope
I hate this time of year. I really do. Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not criticizing religion (at least, not now). I'm just sick and tired and totally disgusted at the commercialism that pervades this time of year. I hate it. It's obscene. It's destructive. It's downright evil.
I do realize that so much of the health of our economy is predicated on how well business, companies and stores succeed in pushing their commercial garbage, but I really think that that minor NOT little issue is maybe what is so critically wrong with our society. We've gone nuts. We're tipping off the deep end. Oh wait...... we already tumbled. Yeah, I wonder why...
Maybe, it's because we put material garbage over the health of children. Maybe it's because we think that the more crapolla we buy, the more American we think we are. People dying in our crumbling streets BE DAMNED. They're not real Americans. Crap! They don't even pay taxes, after all. We can't help them. They don't pay taxes. We can't feed them. They don't pay taxes.
Back to the Christmas season. I always wish the best seasons' greeting to my friends and family, and my coworkers, and my neighbors, and the world. My season's greeting are always about hope for peace in a violent world, hope for health and a humane prosperity, a clean environment free of the toxins of our at present excessive consumption, educational opportunities for all who want and/or need such. The list goes on.
But, one thing I can't quite stomach is the need to go out and buy shit to give to other people, be it family or friends, just to satisfy a seasonal ritual that has nothing to do with Christianity or Judaism or any other religion, and has everything to do with our bloated overindulgent consumoid society, that serves nothing but puts citizens into debt and lines the pockets of traitorous CEOs and politicians. I hate this time of year. I really do.
Oh miggod!!! This little missive is touching on so much, and I haven't even written anything. So, a few of my admittedly simplistic thoughts on the American economy.....
As a society, our economic health, which is the apparent pinnacle of our societal health, is based on consumerism. The more we buy, the more crap has to be made to satify our need to buy. The manufacturers hire more people to make more crap to sell. They flood the markets with the crap and then they spend megabucks on advertising to remind us how badly we need all their crap. It's a cyclic exercise in destruction, as the making of the crap uses energy we can ill afford to use, pollutes our precious environment, and fills our landfills with packaging and all of yesterday's crap.
Speaking of yesterday's crap.... About 20 years ago, I worked with a man from India. He made a very insightful observation about the differences between the American and the Indian societies. In America, labor is expensive, but items are cheap. Therefore, we Americans have developed a throw-away society, needing to always manufacture more stuff using cheap materials to replace, rather than fix damaged older stuff. Cars are a prime example of this, as are other appliances, like washing machines, toasters, etc. Appliances and large ticket items have become disposable, and likely include a planned obsolesce so they require the purchasing of new items sooner, rather than later.
In India, however, materials were very expensive, but labor was cheap. Indians couldn't afford to buy new stuff, because the material to make it was crazy expensive. So, they fixed everything. A car, according to my coworker, would last for 300,000 miles before it had to be replaced. This was the same with all other kinds of appliances and "fixable" items. Unlike India, Americans want to replace their cars, computers and appliances as soon as new models role off the assembly lines.
Well, manufacturers apparently found the best of both worlds. They got their cheap materials from America, shipped it overseas to the far east, India, Malaysia, China, where ever, and now could build their crap for cheap labor. Didn't matter that the labor was exploitative, or that they were trashing the environment of their cheap laborers' neighborhoods, or that they ruined the American economy by reducing the manufacturing base to skeleton-like crews. Didn't matter, at all. They made profits hand over fist. They made out like bandits. Yup, the bandits that they really are. A bunch of crooked, self-serving, now hugely and obscenely wealthy individuals that are laughing all the way to the bank. And, to add insult to injury, they even convinced dirtbag politicians that somehow their "free trade" initiatives were helpful, so they got tax breaks for their criminal efforts. Tax breaks so huge that they actually avoided paying any taxes at all. It was/is so cheap to do business "overseas" that it no longer even made any sense at all to keep manufacturing jobs in America.
Well, in my opinion, they're all a bunch of traitors, including the band of deregulators that enabled this fleecing of America. Dubya and his dick certainly come to mind. Phil Fucking Graham, too. They put America up for sale, for cryin' out loud. And, they've made a fortune doing it. There are laws against profiting from public office, but these dirtbags are apparently above the law. They've sold us all down the river. It's really quite sad.
In just over a month, Obama will take office. He is planning the
largest public works initiative in over 50 years. He is going to get people working again so that they can have roofs over their heads, food on their tables, and boost the economy by buying more crap. Oh no! More crap??!!!
I dunno. I think a huge paradigm shift has to take place here. A shift that removes that concept that consumerism is the pinnacle of our economic wealth, and make it where the health of the people themselves are the basis of our economic health. Education is a key, and medical care, infrastructure, environmental health, and reduced energy consumption, are just a few of what I see to be critically important building blocks of a health society. I am holding out great hope for Obama. My hope is that he will institute a model of governing that tosses, finally for cryin' out loud, fucking Reagonomics, the voodoo economic model that was the beginning of the financial crisis we are in today. I continue to hold Obama Hope for the future. He's all we've got right now.
Labels: Christmas, consumerism, dubya, economy, liberal, traitors
I had a dream last night. It was about Zuki, the Dusty Dog. I just keep reliving it, over and over. Fact is, I'm consciously trying to relive it. I am trying to remember every last detail about this dream. It's the only way that I can still feel like Zuki is with me. Sure, I have tons of photographs of her. I'm a photographer, after all. But, photographs only take me so far. They enable me to see her as she literally was. They enable me to remember how beautiful she was. They enable me to hold a piece of her forever in my heart.
I hate this time of year. I really do. Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not criticizing religion (at least, not now). I'm just sick and tired and totally disgusted at the commercialism that pervades this time of year. I hate it. It's obscene. It's destructive. It's downright evil.
But, one thing I can't quite stomach is the need to go out and buy shit to give to other people, be it family or friends, just to satisfy a seasonal ritual that has nothing to do with Christianity or Judaism or any other religion, and has everything to do with our bloated overindulgent consumoid society, that serves nothing but puts citizens into debt and lines the pockets of traitorous CEOs and politicians. I hate this time of year. I really do.
As a society, our economic health, which is the apparent pinnacle of our societal health, is based on consumerism. The more we buy, the more crap has to be made to satify our need to buy. The manufacturers hire more people to make more crap to sell. They flood the markets with the crap and then they spend megabucks on advertising to remind us how badly we need all their crap. It's a cyclic exercise in destruction, as the making of the crap uses energy we can ill afford to use, pollutes our precious environment, and fills our landfills with packaging and all of yesterday's crap.
Well, manufacturers apparently found the best of both worlds. They got their cheap materials from America, shipped it overseas to the far east, India, Malaysia, China, where ever, and now could build their crap for cheap labor. Didn't matter that the labor was exploitative, or that they were trashing the environment of their cheap laborers' neighborhoods, or that they ruined the American economy by reducing the manufacturing base to skeleton-like crews. Didn't matter, at all. They made profits hand over fist. They made out like bandits. Yup, the bandits that they really are. A bunch of crooked, self-serving, now hugely and obscenely wealthy individuals that are laughing all the way to the bank. And, to add insult to injury, they even convinced dirtbag politicians that somehow their "free trade" initiatives were helpful, so they got tax breaks for their criminal efforts. Tax breaks so huge that they actually avoided paying any taxes at all. It was/is so cheap to do business "overseas" that it no longer even made any sense at all to keep manufacturing jobs in America.
Well, in my opinion, they're all a bunch of traitors, including the band of deregulators that enabled this fleecing of America. Dubya and his dick certainly come to mind. Phil Fucking Graham, too. They put America up for sale, for cryin' out loud. And, they've made a fortune doing it. There are laws against profiting from public office, but these dirtbags are apparently above the law. They've sold us all down the river. It's really quite sad.
