I have no doubt this is an excellent book. However, after 71 years and a few dogs, I can’t even look at the cover without feeling my eyes fill with tears. I watched “Marley & Me” and so enjoyed it up to the moment I realized the ending wasn’t going to be a fade away, in which you knew what was coming but you didn’t have to watch it. I wanted it to be in that area of ‘I won’t think of that now.’

But, there it was, a dog, kids and a burial.

And me remembering dogs “going to sleep” and dogs collapsing . . . We have had Sad and it is a haunting thing.

A Good Dog

I know who is inside this Dilbert building saying this:

Well, my little chickadees. I have been on hiatus. Not really, of course, but it sounds so much better than saying I have been lazy. Not much has been happening and that is my fault; I have been doing nothing – and I have been doing that diligently.

Lord, I do not look forward to the election next year now that Facebook and Twitter are going super full force. Everyone and their brother has already started posting unpleasant memes. It is a stampede of those who believe if you want to get your point across you should SHOUT and INTERRUPT, and if necessary, do it louder.

Perhaps I should not have just said “brother” now that the Episcopal Church has some announcement about not using He as a God reference. So would it be every brother, sister, in-law, inter-sexed and so forth?

I would bang my head against the wall, but then I would look like Dilbert. Understand by clicking. Then, again, it might be an improvement.

This is a little reminiscent of the film “The Producer” with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. At one point, Wilder goes berserk with total frustration and jumps on Mostel’s back, yelling various forms of the word FAT.

That rant didn’t help. I need to just go around repeating this post title over and over and over again until I am hoarse. That sort of helps. There is something comforting about repetition, and not just in venting emotion. I think Sesame Street started it for me: The guys would sing “On Wisconsin” but replacing every syllable with “street.” Try it; I started doing it 49 years ago and I still do it. I’ve even branched out to using some designated word to replace a lot of the words in other songs.

We were streeting along on streetlight bay . . .

Time to move on. But NOT into the kitchen.

I have known for a long time about the Duke of Wellington; I think it was in grade school that someone told me he beat Napoleon at Waterloo. Since then I have actually put a bit more time into reading about the man. HOWEVER, when watching one of the films about the fictional Richard Sharpe of the 95th Rifles, I caught myself staring at an actor’s face. And all I could think was “nose  –  what a big, big  nose.”

When I realized that I was focused so tightly on the nose instead of the man – instead of the Duke of Wellington and his achievements, I was reminded of an aspect of my human nature that isn’t so cool.

So, I don’t think I’ll tell anyone, let alone post this on FACEbook.

I’m here because I’m comfortable here, although I’m going to have to wander around a bit for it to feel really at home. I don’t know why I changed the format. I don’t like it; I liked my clutter. I liked links to things gathered on one page.

I don’t know if I’m going to retro the whole thing or try to work out some compromise. Well, what I need to do is to start writing some stuff that isn’t fluff. I don’t mean profound thoughts; I just mean writing what I am thinking.

I am sick and tired of goody-two-shoes words, world peace wishes, and anti-Trump bandwagon rants. I want to mention something without anyone screaming, “Oh, we can’t talk about that.”  For Christ’s sake, we are what we are and in no way has evolution made us angels.

Just as an aside, do the fans at sports games stand and cheer for each team?

Of course, I picked up the Is is safe? question from the movie, The Marathon Man, and then I was introduced to the German Look by the book, In the Garden of Beasts Erik Larson. The last reference, if it unfamiliar to you, is about the habit Germans developed in the 1930’s of looking around to see who was watching/listening before they said anything about the politics of the time. That was because they were worried about the growing Nazi influence.

There are indications in this era that is the situation is reversed. Often, if anyone even asks for a clarification of terms, poses a philosophical question or simply asks to have something explained, the group of people opposed to the current administration are not inclined to say, “Well, let me give you my take on that matter.”

You can witness on the Internet social media sites that a lot don’t answer, but, in essence, proclaim, “You jerk.”

One example is the word immigrant. Yes, we are all immigrants to North America, but can you even wonder about contrasting that to immigrants to the United States. Many early settlers were emigrating to a newly discovered world. They came on sailing ships. During a century plus, they thought about, argued about, and probably came to fisticuffs about the idea of forming a new country. During that time, there was no talk of streets paved with gold.

I have ancestors on both sides of that divide – many came very early to escape religious persecution and the last one to come got here just in time for the Civil War, meaning he probably rode a train to where he enlisted in the Midwest. He was, I would say, an immigrant.

But I am only mentioning this on this obscure site because I just don’t feel like having a mob jump down my throat.

And one other thing, I have presented this thought in my own words, not in a meme posted on Facebook.

Yesterday, I showered midday and then realized that it was trash day and if I wanted to be productive and get junk out of the garage, I should do so. But that would get me dirty. I don’t mind getting dirty, but that would mean I’d have to shower again. That’s not so bad, but it’s a series of steps: find new clothes to put on, undress, take the bathrobe and towel into the shower room, get shampoo on your hair, then wash you body under the shower while allowing your hair to rinse, then re-sudsing your hair because your mother always told you to wash it twice, getting out of the shower, toweling up, putting on some clothes, drying your limp, thinning hair and put on more clothes.

Actually, all those steps aren’t so bad; what’s unpleasant is anytime I get in the shower I remember being bored with baths when I was little and my parents making me stay in one until I got wrinkly fingers.  Sometimes I still feel the urge to cry out, “I’m wrinkled.”

The extra trash did not get loaded up and it is still there. Now I could go out and retrieve my trash cans from the curb and start putting the aforementioned dirty junk in them, or I could not. I don’t have the just showered excuse. I feel I am being pushed into a moral corner here.  It’s amazing how long one can sit and ponder the virtues of morality.