Friday, September 28, 2007
The Truth About Cats and Dogs
I'm an unabashed dog person, but there is one terrible, hidden fact that hits me in the gut whenever I look into my own dog's adoring eyes: they are all fake.
This will come as a rude awakening for all you hippies out there, but virtually every "natural" object in our human world is a product of genetic engineering. Every fruit and vegetable, every garden flower, every domesticated animal, every animal food source (with the strange exception of fish) has been meticulously cultivated and cross-bred to serve specifically human purposes. There is evidence that pre-historic man as early as 10,000 years ago was a skilled cross-breeder. Bio-engineering, it seems, is something we humans are just naturally good at.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in dogs, yet most people are in denial about it. Most view dogs' qualities as wonders of nature: their loyalty, their intelligence, their ability to do useful tasks, their great desire to fit in with human families and, above all, their tremendous unconditional love for their human masters.
Fake. Fake, fake, fake, fake. Everything about dogs was designed by us. Natural dogs are nasty, feral little creatures, not much different from other canine species. It must have taken generations of cruelty and cross-breeding for our ancient ancestors to beat them into submission and engineer the specific physical and behavioural qualities they wanted.
I'm reminded of a scene in the science-fiction classic Bladerunner, in which reclusive android designer J.F. Sebastian explains his social life:
Pris: Must get lonely here, J.F.Dogs are the same. "Man's best friend" is made to order.
J.F. Sebastian: Not really. I MAKE friends. They're toys. My friends are toys. I make them. It's a hobby. I'm a genetic designer.
But, as difficult as it is to stomach this realization about dogs, it begs an even more perplexing question:
How could we have gone so terribly wrong with cats?
Once again, I must admit my bias. To the same degree that I like dogs, I dislike cats. I'm terribly allergic to them, so of course that has coloured my view of the creatures (although our blog friend Cindy has some cute kitten pics that have melted my cat-hating heart on occasion.)
Biases aside, you can't escape the fact that cats are useless. They're lazy, untrainable, selfish and aloof. Where dogs thrive on human contact, cats seem merely to tolerate it.
Yet, just like dogs, cats are designed. We made them act that way. We took normal, ferocious wild felines, beat almost all of the hunting skills out of them and purposely engineered a species of surly layabouts.
What in heaven's name would have possessed us to do that?
It's not a rhetorical question. I'm opening the flood-gates to the always popular "cats vs. dogs" debate. Put yourself in the shoes ... well, fur leggings, maybe ... of a primitive human and give me your best theory for the original product design and marketing of CatTM .
posted by Mentok @ 9:49 a.m.,
,
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
It Just Doesn't Make Sense!
Over my breakfast porridge, I got to thinking: What is the point of Goldilocks and the Three Bears?
Sure, I know, there are various versions but in most of them she either gets away or is befriended by the bears. Typically, even sanitized fables have a moral.
Is it "Always lock your doors"? How about "If you're good looking, you can get away with anything."
Maybe its a professional criminal, Usual Suspects-type message: "Don't fall asleep when you're on a job or the bears (cops, Keyser Soze) will get you."
Or, at the other end of the law-and-order spectrum, maybe its a CSI message: "No matter how perfect your crime, you will always leave clues" e.g. broken chairs, eaten porridge.
Speaking of the porridge, that's something else that doesn't make sense. Wouldn't they have cooked the porridge in one big pot? Why is it all different temperatures? Even if we allow for different perceptions of temperature, does it make sense that a child would have the median perception between two adults?
And that whole 'going for a walk' business is totally loony. I mean, I get how going for a walk would make hot porridge colder, but how was it supposed to make cold porridge hotter? By either logic, the 'just right' porridge would have been ruined.
Mind you, these are bears we're talking about. We can't expect that they would have a good grasp of thermodynamics.
Maybe that's the lesson: "Blondes are even dumber than bears."
No, that still doesn't sound right. I think underlying all of this is that the women in the fable get exactly what they want. Going for a walk only really suited the Momma Bear. Goldilocks, in most versions, gets off scot-free.
So I guess the ultimate moral is actually pretty instructive for those of us in a family or a relationship: "Momma always gets what she wants."
posted by Mentok @ 9:49 a.m.,
,
Monday, September 24, 2007
The Secret
I don't like to dwell on political stuff in this blog, but this bit was too hard to resist.
Canada gets a lot of buzz these days as being a basically decent place whose public policy, on the whole, rolls out in a more sensible way than some other places one could mention.
What's the secret? This week, the formula for Canada's moderate, sensible politics was eloquently summarized by an unlikely source: Tom Flanagan!
This name will mean nothing to you Americans, so permit me to bore you with a quick recap: in the 1990s, Canadian conservatives were in a vicious civil war in which they were split into two parties, one rather radical and the other quite moderate (the latter's name, Progressive Conservative, pretty much said it all).
After a decade and a half of beating their heads against the wall, the radicals basically gave up and, for all intents and purposes, rejoined the traditional old moderate Tory party.
Flanagan is a Calgary right-wing academic (which is a bit like calling some one a Texas redneck ... the two terms just amplify each other). He was one of the intellectual leaders of the radical right faction. His statement in the Globe and Mail this weekend asserting the importance of moderate politics is, for my money, the final declaration of surrender from that group.
[Here's the real quick-and-dirty American translation: this is like Ross Perot saying "the main thing in politics is not to do anything crazy"]
The principles he "recommends" to the Canadian Tory (Conservative) party are in fact nothing new. They are the principles that every successful party in this country has always used.
If every political party, all over the world, could stick to this agenda, we'd all be better off.
I'll just give you the big labels and a link to the full declaration:
Tom Flanagan's "Ten Commandments of Conservative Campaigning"
- Unity
- Moderation
- Inclusion
- Incrementalism
- Policy
- Self-Discipline
- Toughness
- Grassroots politics
- Technology
- Persistence
On one level, I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this article. These are exactly the principles that we Progressive Conservatives were screaming at people like Flanagan for the better part of two decades. Nice that they're finally listening. Would have been nicer ten years ago. (Not that I'm bitter or anything.)
posted by Mentok @ 9:59 a.m.,
,
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
My Nemesis
As one who tries to follow the precepts of Buddhism, I usually make every effort to respect all life and avoid feelings of hatred. But there is one case where I completely fall down on both counts, one creature that I hate utterly and kill at every opportunity:
The Creeping Bellflower.
Fuck you, creeping bellflower!
My blood is getting angried-up just thinking about it. I did some fall maintenance on my backyard last weekend and that involved losing myself in my ongoing battle with that c--ksucking creeping bellflower. (Pardon my language)
For those of you blissfully unaware of the creeping bellflower, it is a highly invasive perennial that will swallow up your entire lawn and garden if you let it get away from you. Once established in your yard, you will never be rid of it. Never! It is impossible to eliminate, is unaffected by herbicides and can only be controlled (but not killed) by digging it up along with big chunks of your lawn.
I used to be fairly tolerant in my feelings about weeds. I used to say "weeds are just perennials with a bad rap." I still picked them, of course, but I bore them no ill will. Not so the motherf---king creeping bellflower, which in my view is pure evil in plant form.
What makes is it so evil is its seductive appearance. It was actually introduced on purpose to North America as a decorative plant. To this day, there are people who unwittingly introduce it to their gardens thinking it is some sort of nice, hardy, easy-to-grow wild flower.
But once it's in there, it's Invasion of the Body Snatchers time. It starts to shoot out thin, nearly invisible subterranean runners that snake out for yards, stopping occasionally to drop down a big, fat carrot-like root at such a depth that the plant's survival is assured in the face of the harshest winters, the driest droughts and the most toxic chemicals.
When I'm at war with this goddamn bastard plant, I love finding those big roots. They are deep, sometimes as much as a foot below the surface, and I have to massacre my lawn to get to them, but it always feels like I've unearthed a master vampire and driven a stake through his heart. Eliminating one big root will choke off colonies of the little monsters for yards around.
But they are sneaky. They gravitate to fences where it's easy to hide. Even if you uproot every last effing bellflower in your own yard, they can just retreat back to roots hidden across the fence in your neighbour's yard, like Osama bin Laden hiding out in the mountain passes in Pakistan.
I had some decorative wooden edging separating my lawn from my garden. I ripped that up and, sure enough, there was a virtual little civilization of the infernal things underneath. I'm on to you now, creeping bellflower. You can't hide forever.
I've read that experienced gardeners have spent as much as 18 years battling creeping bell-flower with limited success. This is about the third year for me. It's a long haul, I know that, I'm prepared for it.
At the end of the day, I looked out over the yard. It looked like a real war zone: stuff ripped up, craters here and there. It was a terrible day, full of loss. But all wars demand sacrifice and this war, I know, is for a just cause. I am fighting for the freedom and security of plant-life everywhere. Well, everywhere in my yard anyway.
posted by Mentok @ 12:02 p.m.,
,
Friday, September 14, 2007
Life and Death in Blogdum
As our old friend FiL mentioned in my Facebook post, the comings and goings in bloggoland remind us of the impermanence of things.
It's funny though how this little virtual social reality of ours gets under one's skin. The friends, the enemies, the crushes, the flame wars, all rise and fall so quickly you feel like you're living out a sped-up alternate life. Even though you know it isn't rational, you can't help but feel that the passing of a blog is like a death in the family. I've been at this for two years now but I feel like I've gone through 10 years worth of relationships of one sort or another.
Today is one of those days most bloggers dread: link-list clean up day. We say goodbye to some old friends but also hello to new ones.
An overdue goodbye to Sabatkes, Bathroom Hippo, Canadian Sentinel, Arkanas and all my old Newfoundlander readers. They were all with me in the beginning and their blog passing makes me feel e-sad and blog-old.
Irish Eyes and The Night have been in the graveyard for awhile, but now it's time to eliminate the graveyard, especially since it now turns out they've been resurrected in Facebook land.
On with the show.
P.S. Congratulations to Liz from Roaring Machine for landing her new job. Break a leg!
posted by Mentok @ 2:54 p.m.,
,
It's About Time!
The only good thing to come out of those atrocities was Little Miss Sunshine, and that only because the beauty contest scenes represented perhaps the greatest cinematic achievement in the depiction of irony. If you've seen it, you know what I mean.
posted by Mentok @ 10:40 a.m.,
,
Thursday, September 06, 2007
My Horoscope
I don't really believe in horoscopes at all yada yada, you know the schpiel. Anyway, here's my Tarot.com reading for today:
Your artistic nature is being amplified now as beautiful Venus continues to activate your key planet Uranus. Though the effects of this weird aspect can make it harder to be creative because your ideas just don't fit in. Don't bother intellectualizing what's happening. Just jump in and experience it.I wrote about a half dozen different Uranus gags to go along with this, but they're all too obvious. Please write your own and enjoy!
IMPORTANT UPDATE!
The found comedy continues. Here's my Sept.9 entry from Tarot.com:
Your key planet, Uranus, is on overload today, charging the air with metaphysical lightning.I actually had hot peppers and beer last night! It's too freaky how accurate these things can be.
posted by Mentok @ 3:14 p.m.,
,
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Rent
You see those little tabby things at the top of the page? You may remember in my last make-over phase that I tried to maintain a bunch of different blogs and expected my loyal readers to check out each one diligently. Well, never really worked and I've long since given up trying to keep them updated.
Under my old "Attempts at Profundity" site, my first entry was the cryptic axiom "Key=Chain". Nobody really got it at the time, but what I was getting at was my recurrent notion that ownership is often a form of self-imposed slavery. I thought about this a great deal over the course of this summer as I gazed longingly at various leisure items.
I put it this way to a friend who was thinking about building a cabin:
"Before you decide to own a cabin, make sure you are prepared for the cabin to own you."
...because that's what happens. You buy a cabin and bam! there go your holidays and most of your summer weekends for the rest of your life. Thinking about taking a trip somewhere else this year? Well, you can't because then you've wasted your money on your cabin and you'll probably suffer a break-in or other damage from inadequate maintenance.
RV? Same deal. Buy one and you'll spend every summer on the road hunting for places to unload your sewage.
Boats? Again, buy one and you'll feel obligated to go boating every summer weekend whether you feel like it or not. Hauling. Launching. Docking. Repairing. Fees, fees, fees every time you turn around.
After my son's birthday, I've even come to this conclusion about convertibles. They are cool the first three times you drive them. After that, you get used to them and the annoyance factors start to become more noticeable.
There are some things worth owning, like your house or your car. Stuff you are going to use all the time or stuff that represents an investment.
But leisure items? Nope, I think I'll probably just stick to renting them, thank you very much.
posted by Mentok @ 9:52 a.m.,
,
