Just Breathe

This is for my little friend, China, who was euthanized Monday due to complications related to renal failure. China was our foster cat, a partially blind, partially deaf, elderly cat who was so thin she could've been the poster child for starving cats. A birth defect affected the structure of her face so that it was almost flat and no one is quite sure why her legs were bent this way and she walked that way. She had long back feet that reminded me of a jack rabbit. We gave her pills for hyperthyroidism, wiped her chin after meals because she didn't groom herself, administered subcutaneous fluids, and mashed her food to mush because she only had a few teeth left. She was a mess, really, a being Mother Nature would normally never have let live to be 12-13 years old. Someone took care of her, however, and when she was abandoned, other people found value in her, and we were eventually led to her. We were able to fill her last few months with what we all deserve: comfort, companionship, and love. The last I saw her she was laying peacefully in her carrier, relaxed, aware, and ready.

In retrospect, China gave me signs that her time was near. She stopped meowing, rarely strayed from her room, and slowly she began to stop eating. She never tired of being petted, though, even during her last night, and I think if she could have said as much, China would have echoed the final lyrics of Pearl Jam's "Just Breathe":

Nothing you would take
Everything you gave
Hold me 'till I die
Meet you on the other side.

It's All About Me

This blog is an exercise in egotism. It's very existence means that I believe you want to know something about me: what I think, do, say or feel. No one asked me to start a blog or said, "You know, you're a funny guy. You should start a blog." I am quite funny, but mine's the kind of humor that only my wife finds funny. Nor is this an extension of my professional self, although in a previous blogging life I did vent a bit about my chosen profession. I'm certainly not getting paid for my efforts to grace you with what's on my mind. Unfortunately, I have no expertise to lend you, no wares or services to peddle; I'm not part of a network of people sharing photos of cats (but I certainly have some to share) or swooning over vampires; and though I would like you to think, believe and act like me (because if you did the world would be a better place), my goal is not to convert you religiously, politically or philosophically. I simply have things to say and felt that you might like to hear me out.

Horn-y

To get to and from work, I travel a total of 36.4 miles, and in Atlanta that amounts to almost two hours in my car each workday. That car is a 2002 Saturn sedan, and though we've traveled over 94,000 miles together, I'm not that attached to the Silver Bullet. For starters, nothing about him is automatic. I have to use a key to open his doors and passengers have to be reminded to lock the door behind them. My elbow actually moves when I roll down a window, and I have to stretch across the front seat to roll-down the passenger window. Rolling down the back windows requires pre-planning. The radio is factory-made, and I have to manually remove the antenna each time I take him in to get washed. The one feature the Silver Bullet has that many on the road lack, however, is a horn that speaks volumes.

The American car horn is a notable exception to poorly made American products. The horns of foreign-made cars can barely reach a fevered "beep!" while their American counterparts elicit a blasting "honk!" They are loud, annoying and difficult to ignore. It's important to me that the object of my honks understands my point fully, and beeping just doesn't do that.

I'm not a car-person - for me, they serve only a practical purpose - so I can't speak with authority on car horns; however, I know that my Saturn has a horn that packs as much punch if not more than the SUV's bearing down on me. And I'm not afraid to use it either. Having appointed myself the arbiter of good and bad driving, it is my duty to pass judgment on others' driving skills, or, more appropriately, their lack thereof. I'm particularly fond of honking at someone who isn't paying attention when the light turns green or who fails to signal before turning. People who talk on their cell phones or text while driving are also favorite victims. I'm looking forward to the day when I pull aside someone texting while driving and just letting the Silver Bullet's horn blare away.

Not everyone shares my affinity for the car horn. In Montreal, it's considered rude to honk at someone, and once I could barely contain myself when my mom let a car pull out in front of us, then stop, go in reverse, and then do a u-turn right in the middle of the street without so much as a honk. Her response? "We don't honk in Colorado." Arrrgh. Chicago and New York are more my style. In Chicago, the person five cars behind the light will start honking in anticipation of the green light, and New York just isn't New York without a 24-hour chorus of car horns. Music to my ears.

The Silver Bullet is aging, and the day will come when I will have to replace him. My next car will have power-everything, including a power-horn, and I plan to submit each car horn to a test. Any model that "beeps" is out of the question.

Judgment Day

Judgment Day this year is May 22, which is a Sunday, if you don't have a calendar handy. I know this to be true not because I'm a prophet or because of visions or dreams I had foretelling of said event. No voice(s) spoke to me in the dark and the only cult I'm guilty of associating with has more to do with cats than the end of the world. No, this knowledge was imparted to me from a billboard on the way to the veterinarian's office. Normally, I wouldn't remember this particular public service announcement any more than I remember the those announcing the next gun show, except that this one offers something others lack: a guarantee. That's right, Judgment Day is "guaranteed" to happen on May 22. Guarantees of this sort are hard to ignore, so naturally I've begun to evaluate whether or not on May 22 I will ascend to loftier heights or be sent further south than I already am.

Like all people, my life has not been sin-free. The degree of my sinfulness has fluctuated over time, with my younger years being oriented more toward vice than virtue and my more recent years being not so much more virtuous as less inclined to vice. I think that come May 22 the transgressions of my youth will be overlooked and the focus will be on who I am now. Using the Seven Deadly Sins as a benchmark, I feel I'm well positioned to be judged favorably, despite some noticeable flaws:

Gluttony:
I love large portions of food and drink. While I publicly renounce America's gluttonous lifestyle, I am guilty of not being able to hold myself to just one cookie or brownie or doughnut. I believe that the more french fries there are before me, the better off I am, and if you want to get my attention, just say, "buffet."

Wrath:
People piss me off and most are no damn good. My anger at their (and my own) incompetence bodes ill for me on Judgment Day. Generally speaking, if I don't allow myself to dwell on the bad that other people do or to use power tools that I've never used before, I'm usually pretty mild mannered.

Sloth:
I'm not so much lazy as I am undisciplined. I'm not a good project manager because I often just stop projects and let them be; I lose interest easily and my wandering mind then focuses on something else only to lose interest again. Knowing this about myself, I simply don't start projects. For instance, I want to have chickens but that requires building a coop which requires using power tools which will make me wrathful, and so I don't try to build a coop and subsequently I don't have any chickens. I'm hoping that my intentions more than my inaction will have some impact on the Judge(s).

So, I have some work to do boosting my life's resume before May 22. How you will fare come Judgment Day this May, I don't know. I know some of you will exult in eternal bliss, while others...well...you're goners. One thing I've learned from watching "Judge Judy" that might help is that you should always go to court well-dressed, so on May 22, please wear your finest. But don't overdue it; Pride is the worst sin of them all, and if on Judgment Day you're looking and feeling too fine, too sure of yourself, then, you're going down. Guaranteed.

Given to Fly?

I like to fly. Or, rather, to be flown somewhere, since I have neither wings of a feather or a pilot's license of my own. I like how I can board a plane in the morning and be on the ground, eating lunch hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from where I was only hours before. I love staring out of the window at the world below me, and I'm always awestruck when on cloudy days the sea of clouds stretches endlessly like I imagine ice does in Antarctica. Flying for me never loses its wonder...unless I'm in the middle seat, and then the whole experience pretty much sucks. Nonetheless, flying is quite possibly humankind's greatest achievement. And, yet, I don't think we are supposed to be up there with the clouds and the birds. I understand that we can and are able to fly; it's just that I'm not convinced that simply because we can and do, that we ought and should.

Life in the clouds was once reserved for the heavenly hosts, whether they were on Mt. Olympus or just beyond St. Peter's gate, but when man in his airplanes broke through the water vapor separating us from the divine and, to the delight of atheists worldwide, debunked the vision of harps and angels and so forth, that spiritual connection was lost. We've pushed the heavens out into planetary orbit, so that all we have now is the sky. I like the sky very much, but I miss the days when there was more mystery to it.

If You Can't Control Your Dog...

Recently a man in Colorado Springs shot and killed a dog that attacked his dog while out for a walk: http://www.krdo.com/news/27062645/detail.html. What annoys me the most about this story is the attitude of the owner of the offending, now deceased, dog: "...she thinks the greyhound's owner did not give her a chance to regain control of Flato before using his gun." The simple fact is that Flato would be alive today had his owner not been so irresponsible and lost control of him. If I had been the owner of the greyhound, I would have done the same thing. Of course, I'd need a gun, but that's a story for another day.

It's something I encounter regularly when I'm out walking our dog, this holier-than-thou mindset on the part some dog owners that makes them think keeping their dog under control at all times doesn't pertain to them. Or maybe it's just careless stupidity. Controlling your dog means more than keeping him on a leash; it also means being able to prevent him from, say, bolting after another dog (or squirrel, cat or kid). If your dog is big enough to make you lose your balance or prevents you from having complete control of the situation, then you have no right bringing him out in public. I see it all the time at the park: tiny women "walking" their Pit Bull or Boxer or Rottweiler or Lab and almost falling over trying to stop it from breaking away. Big dogs are like bottom-shelf tequila; if you can't handle it, don't order it.

"Oh, but he just wants to play." Well, dude, we don't want to play with him, so get him the f**k away from my dog.

With some big dogs there's not enough time to "regain control" before the damage is done. A dog as big as a mastiff can seriously hurt if not kill another animal by the time the owner "regain[s] control" of it, which is why owners of big dogs need to have complete control of their dog at all times when out in public. Have you ever noticed that owners of big dogs that attack animals and children universally place the blame on the victim? They will claim their dog has never hurt anyone or anything before, and that the dead dog or maimed child must have done something to provoke the attack. If you can't control your dog, you don't deserve to have him.

But it's not just big dogs that need to be kept under control. Those yappity, snarling bundles of fearless fur are no less dangerous when not controlled. I don't care if your dog is the size of a football and can't hurt anything but itself; just keep him away from my dog. Sometimes I take a spray bottle with me when I walk Boo to keep him in-line (it's called RESPONSIBLE dog walking), and one time this little Jack Russell muttly thing came running up behind us and sniffing at Boo. I shot the f***er square in the face with a stream of water and sent him hightailing it back to his no-good hippie owner who, then, leashed him. In a fight, Boo would've taken him, but that's not the point: keep your dog under control and away from my dog, or else.

Or else what? Well, I don't have a handgun, and despite the effectiveness of a spray bottle, I doubt it would do much good against a dog hell-bent on doing harm. But know this: if your dog hurts my dog (or cats), I will go medieval on its ass. I may be a card carrying member of the ASPCA, HSUSA, and Best Friends Animal Society, but I will not let your irresponsibility go unchecked if it threatens my dog. I love dogs, I truly do, but I love mine more than I love yours, and if I have to kick, beat, bite, gouge, scratch, strangle or run over your dog to protect mine, trust me, I will. So, keep your dog leashed and under control, and there won't be a problem. Someone should have told as much to Flato's owner.

Hug a Cop

As you near the top of the escalators in Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, you'll notice two or three senior citizens donning red, white and blue and waving little flags. All arriving uniformed military personnel are met by these enthusiastic seniors with clapping, handshakes, and words of thanks. It's probably the same in many of our airports: veterans and average civilians personally thanking our enlisted men and women for "all that [they] do." It's a good thing. Whether or not you agree with our foreign policy the men and women who volunteer for military service do deserve our gratitude.

I find it sad that we don't extend the same gratitude to police officers. Clearly there are differences between the two, and I'm not equating patrolling the streets of Norcross, GA, with those of Kandahar or Kabul. Nonetheless, when you volunteer to become a police officer, to serve and protect, you, too, place your life at risk for the greater good. Many police officers have made the "supreme sacrifice" in their service to our country. How many of you knew that 1) 161 police officers were killed in the line of duty in 2010, and 2) that only 16 of those deaths were considered accidental or health-related? Take a look for yourself.

Why don't we give the police the same respect and adoration we give our soldiers? Two reasons come to mind. One is the common (mis)perception that the police can't be trusted, that all police officers are corrupt. "All cops," I've been told, "are bad cops." Unfortunately, there are police officers who engage in racial profiling, destroy evidence, use unnecessary force, commit sexual assaults, and participate in those criminal activities they're charged to stop. However, you can no more say that all police officers are bad because some of them are bad anymore than you can say that all soldiers humiliate and torture prisoners, rape and murder civilians, and throw puppies off of cliffs simply because some of them have done just those things. The Department of Defense contends that such actions on the part of our soldiers are isolated incidents and those soldiers are in no way representative of the majority of men and women serving in the military. And we believe that because we know it to be true; we need it to be true. Well, I contend the same for our police force: the illegal and immoral actions of some officers are not representative of all officers. If you are one of those who believe that all cops are bad based of the actions of a few, then by your own logic, you must also believe that all our soldiers are rapists, murderers and animal abusers.

The other reason people don't readily give hero status to police officers is that the police have the power to punish us for our bad behavior, and we don't like that. Police have the thankless job of keeping us in line. They stop us for speeding, tell us to keep the music down, ticket us for public drunkenness, arrest us for shoplifting. We bitch that a cop is never around when we need one but are just as quick to bitch when they bust us for breaking the law. We want the enforcement of laws to apply to everybody but ourselves. And while we hystericize about police states, we conveniently forget that if it wasn't for the police there would be a lot more wife beaters, child molesters, gang bangers, dog fighters, rapists, burglars, and murderers hanging around neighborhoods, schools, and parks. Why don't we thank them for that?

Soldiers aren't perfect and there are some who aren't worthy of hero status; still, we recognize that most of them do the best they can and we honor and thank them for trying. Your local police officer deserves no less.