10 THINGS YOUR DOG WOULD TELL YOU…
1. My life is likely to last 10 to 15 years. Any separation from you will be painful. Remember that before you get me.
2. Give me time to understand what you want of me.
3. Place your trust in me — it is crucial to my well-being.
4. Do not be angry at me for long, and do not lock me up as punishment.
5. You have your work, your entertainment, and your friends. I only have you.
6. Talk to me sometimes. Even if I don’t understand your words, I understand your voice when it is speaking to me.
7. Be aware that however you treat me, I will never forget.
8. Remember before you hit me that I have teeth that could easily hurt you, but I choose not to bite you because I love you.
9. Before you scold me for being uncooperative, obstinate, or lazy, ask yourself if something might be bothering me. Perhaps I might not be getting the right food, or I have been out too long, or my heart is getting too old and weak.
10. Take care of me when I get old; you too will grow old. Go with me on difficult journeys. Never say: “I cannot bear to watch” or “Let it happen in my absence.” Everything is easier for me if you are there, even my death.
Mike_C and I had an e-mail exchange the other day and I’ll share a reference that he gave me that comes from Poul Anderson’s novel, “A Stone in Heaven” – page 215
The hours went by.
Flandry spent much of them remembering. It was true what he’d told Banner, by and large, he’d had a good life. His spirit had taken many terrible wounds, but had scarred them over and carried on. More hurtful, perhaps, had been its erosion, piece by piece, as he wrought evil, unleashed destruction, and caused unmerited, bewildering pain, in the service of — of what? A civilization gone iniquitous in its senility, foredoomed not by divine justice but by the laws of a universe in which he could find no meaning. A Corps that was, as yet, less corrupt, but ruthless as a machine. A career that was, well, interesting, but for whose gold he had paid the Nibelung’s price.
Still, he declined to pity himself. He had met wild adventures, deep serenities, mystery, beauty, luxury, sport, mirth, admiration, and comradeship, on world-after-world in an endlessly fascinating cosmos. He had drunk noble wines, bedded exquisite women, overcome enemies who were worth the trouble, conversed with beings who possessed wisdom — yes, except for hearth and home, he had enjoyed practically everything a man can. And…he had saved more lives than he ruined; he had helped win untold billions of man-years of peace; new, perhaps more hopeful civilizations would come to birth in the future, and he had been among those who guarded their womb.
Indeed, he thought, I am grossly overprivileged. Which is how it should be.
For CederQ
Bullet Points:
** Many Founders, including Madison himself, didn’t think listing out our rights was necessary. In a perfect world, perhaps they would have been right. Yet knowing that men are not angels, we should be abundantly thankful that we have this list of legal protections to fall back on when the federal government infringes on our God-given rights—which it is doing at an increasing and alarming rate.
** The Silicon Valley Bank prioritized social justice over risk management. It’s the new gold standard for the financial sector.
** I’m in favor of compulsory universal military service. It should provide our spoiled kids with discipline and teach them that they are not the center of the world. But it won’t happen.
** A Public Service Notice:
** One of the more delightful aspects of being a dissident from the absurd apocalyptic climate doom cult is the ability to laugh at the decades’ worth of failed, yet quite specific predictions of disaster from purported “experts” that the media has gleefully trumpeted. The track record of the failure of previous predictions matters not in the least, as if mass amnesia has infected not just the media, but government, academia, and the corporate world. (More…at American Thinker)
I recently looked at the Anti-Federalists (who gave us the Bill of Rights) with a new appreciation.
I’m half-way thru Dumas Malone’s six-volume work on Thomas Jefferson, which has convinced me that Aaron Burr did us all a solid when he shot down Hamilton.
The woke haven’t rewritten those yet? Perhaps they started with children’s books because that is where their reading left off?
I appreciate the sarcasm, but Those People concentrate on children because they play the game across generations. Indoctrinate the young, and by the time they are adults (by chronological age at any rate), they will themselves repudiate actual history and commentary. No need for Those People to go to the effort of rewriting Malone.
Also, they probably go after children because they are perverted, short-eyed, veal loving degenerates. I say sarcastically that the Trinity of the post-Christian West is Negro, Homo, [redacted], but it might also be Negro/Homo/Pedo. The unholy trinity is however pseudo-Arian in that the three are not co-equal. They are rank-ordered and “negro” is definitely on the bottom rung of their hierarchy. The actions and policies of Those People make it very clear.
Incidentally, in second or third grade our teacher decided the class should put on a play about Hamilton. For reasons unclear to me, I was tapped to play Hamilton. I’m pretty sure (this was ~50 year ago) my best friend David was cast as Burr. Hah! Take THAT, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Mrs Wossname cast a Chinaman (Chinaboy?) and a Jewish kid in the lead roles in a Hamilton play. (Mrs W got it backwards of course, in terms of who should have been Hamilton, between me and David.) Anyway, Miranda casting minorities as founding fathers is nothing new. Mrs W was waaay ahead of you! PS the play never happened. There was a LOT of dialog. I probably got 5 or 6 pages (of 50+) of dense monologues, with big words I mostly didn’t understand at age 7 or 8, memorized before Mrs W gave up.
Dogs don’t lie, and, you can always tell the owner by the animal….observations gleaned from assisting MrsPaulM on veterinary Farm Calls.
Man plans, God laughs. Anyone that believes the climate can be controlled is either toking too much Rec-Med and/or has been so indoctrinated they wouldn’t know a lightening bolt if it hit them in the arse. March at 7500 ft can be just about anything, but this morning the much colder than typical 14 degree temperature IS NOT my doing or preference. However, I will enjoy the sun regardless it has become the enemy of the delusional…as soon as it comes up because the Govt Morons keep fiddling with the clock setting believing they are “adding daylight”.
I had a German Shepherd that was a great companion.
Took her on vacation to Mackinaw Island.
So many people came up to ask to pet her, and she’d smile and pant while they did.
But we were sitting by the side of a pedestrian intersection and a guy walked by.
She tensed up and made a low growl watching him as he walked by til he left.
I always wondered what demon(s) he carried with him.
Dogs are adept at ferreting out demons.
Dogs.
Agree with all. Banner recently cut a pad in his left hind foot. Treating him was a rodeo. He didn’t fight me but used passive resistance. Try putting a sock on an 80lb dog who doesn’t want one.
Plz keep us apprised on his recovery.
After a time trying to sedate dogs and [mostly feral] cats that didn’t want any part of it (pain level makes it even harder), I said to MrsPaulM, “We need to come up with a spray sedation to take the edge off so proper sedation can be administered (me wearing the welding gloves and heavy Carhartt work jacket).”
Still thinking about it despite the receptors being not correct, and the fact people getting their hands on a bottle would for sure do nefarious things.
The only result of compulsory military service would be a new tier of enlisted and officer corps where the elite’s children would receive preferential treatment in relation to their peers. In other words, a worsening of the military beyond the damage the woke liberals are doing to it now.
When they go into combat those people seem to die off quickly. Yes, I realize that most of them end up as REMFs.
I am a male chauvinist animal, always have been; I married a woman (for 50 years now) who is a female chauvinist person; anyone within our close, local vicinity never has to worry about Global Cooling!
I am grossly in favor of compulsory universal military service: only for males; I am a male chauvinist animal – even my wife agrees!
MrsPaulM agrees (me as well). She believes part of our national juvenile mentality is due to wayward boys not maturing into disciplined men, asserting that a 2-year military stint would go a long way to fixing that. But nowadays we have 30 year-old “guys” still playing video games and not knowing how to do laundry or cook or be a gentleman. (We can place a chunk of blame on easy divorce, but that’s another discussion). I’d add that “woman are the gatekeepers”… if they demand young men “step up”, eventually they will, but only if the lady’s decide to get back on track themselves. (Generally speaking of course).
Unfortunately our military leadership has become part of the juvenile crowd….that has to be fixed first.
It’s an idea with merit, but we’d still need a professional military, because conscript forces suck ass in comparison.
I also wouldn’t mind other national service options for honest pacifists – for example a national wildfire / disaster relief service, or even a labor service like the CCC.
The final problem is that it would have to be run like a real military, instead of a Marxist indoctrination camp like DoD seems to want to turn everything into these days.
-Kle.
+1
What we all know:
the young men today are not receiving the “basic principles” at home, at school, or at church/synagogue (I have no idea about the mosque); what I call “toilet training”: the readiness to assume basic societal responsibilities. Parents have abandoned their responsibilites/allotted this job to the latter two; the basic amorphous clay is still an undefined blob sixteen years after being weaned from mommy’s breast . I feel like such a fool thinking that a two-year stint in the military will cure the deficiences in questionable raw material.
X2 to all above. There are viable and simple solutions.
Part of the reason males have become very old boys is that the courts and social services and the media have stripped men of all their rights.
Be married to a woman who gets preggers during an affair? The husband pays for it, whether he stays married or divorces her.
Women do bad things? Men pay for it.
Women make fake crime reports against men? Then don’t get charged for a fake crimes. Reverse that, men make fake crime reports against women and will get charged for making fake crime reports.
Women can (mostly) get away with actual domestic violence against men. Men get arrested for women saying without proof “He hit me.” (and there are videos of women beating themselves up and yet still the man gets charged.)
According to the media, literature, movies, yada yada, men are lazy stupid untrustworthy blobs of poop who are going to kill everyone.
And then most women are then attracted to the ‘bad boy’ criminal womanizing drug-using degenerate and ignore the hardworking nice guy.
Why not, if you’re male, just say ‘Fruck it’ and stay home and play games in the basement?
The result of Feminism, a cancer. Real woman don’t need validation from exterior shills pushing an immoral and subversive agenda. Same with men. God’s male-female prescription is for a reason.
X2 to all.
For decades men have been told they are irrelevant, fully contrary to LL’s “Grandfathers” post.
“From Welfare State to Police State”
Stephen Baskerville, The Independent Review 2008
“Perhaps the most fundamental disconnect between public perceptions and present reality is that whereas child support is invariably presented as a method for requiring men to take responsibility for offspring they have sired and then abandoned, it now functions primarily as a means by which “a father is forced to finance the filching of his own children”
Second-wave feminism, specifically.
the courts and social services and the media have stripped men of all their rights
None of that could have happened if over half the voters hadn’t continuously agreed with it, and repeatedly hired representatives to implement it. The presidential campaign of Ron Paul offered an alternative that would substantially move the Overton window. But what percentage of the vote did Paul finally get, 10%? 90% of Americans want big government.
Yes, the very demographic that keeps voting big government and anti-male is the very demographic that abuses men and destroys their lives.
I am not against women voters. I am against the “Kill the Male” people. All of them. Which is why I find it so damned funny that the strongest ‘females,’ the fastest ‘females,’ the best swimming ‘females,’ the ‘first female surgeon general’ and so many other ‘females’ are male. Nothing like death from within, a serious case of prostate cancer, that is destroying modern feminism.
I have a friend who married a woman who turned out to be full bat-shit crazy (like trying to force her 10yo daughter to breast-feed and other crazy things much more heinous.) He divorced her, got 100% control of the kids, yet she got half his retirement fund. For being bat-shit crazy he has to pay? Reverse it, female has bat-shit crazy husband and divorces him for cause, find a court where she has to pay anything for his crazy ass.
Admittedly she was/is required to pay child support to the tune of over $500 a month, which she has yet to pay, and is in arears for over $10,000. But the state won’t snag the money out of the money she’s receiving out of his retirement fund, nope. They also won’t arrest and imprison her for failure to pay child support. Turn the situation around, guy makes $1,000 a month and owes $500 in child support. You can damn well bet that the courts will suck that money out of his monthly paychecks. And you can damn well bet they’ll imprison him for not being able to pay child support.
I am so glad in many ways that I never had children. I look at this fallen world and am horrified at how far screwed up and inverted our nation’s and our world’s values have become.
When it comes right down to it, our rights were secured by violence, with the hope civil discourse would prevail in the future. Since that hasn’t happened, the true intent of the Second Amendment may be revealed.
Thank you LL for the comely lass perusing a book, a pastime I enjoy and would spend countless hours alongside said lass reading to our hearts content. As to your puppy tome, I borrowed it with prejudice for the blog I co-host. It is a heart felt and sober for our loved furry friends and lovers.
I was thinking that you two could exchange cornbread recipes or whatever.
I don’t believe two years compulsory service is long enough. I would opt for a four year service. Look at the draftees coming out of Viet Nam, our last draft. They weren’t anymore disciplined or ready than had they come out of high school. Four years is long enough to learn a skill and forge a discipline by having some skin in the game, two years is just marking time, as much as the last two years of high school, but with “meaner” teachers…
x2
X3
4 year federal service to vote. Like what Heinlein proposed in “Starship Troopers.” May or may not be in the mil, but to vote you gotta serve. It makes some sense. More than the current ‘any dead person can vote for the Dems’ system we have now.
Questions:
1. Compulsory military service for women?
2. Place a woman without (minimum time?) front line experience in a command position?
Compulsory NATIONAL service as (His Excellency) HE-Beans says – service brings citizenship and a right to vote.
I’m not big on female officers or any enlisted in combat arms.
Wanna vote? You gotta serve. Don’t wanna vote? Don’t serve. Simple as that.
Quit (not medically retire or fail) and you never ever ever get to even think about trying again. That would be quit entirely from federal service. Quit-for-cause from infantry or desert will building by hand or whatever one is doing and the fed system will find the quitter-for-cause another job (some people just can’t handle x job while y job is perfect for them.) Quit-Quit and you’re just a taxpayer. You are not a full citizen. Thank you for playing, you’re out.
Things your dog would tell you made me cry, LL. Frankie doggies only been gone about 6 weeks and everything reminds me of him. His tiny box of ashes is on my prayer table surrounded by statues of The Virgin Mary and St. Michael, crucifixes, and pictures of Jesus. It’s a fitting place for him.
I’m sorry my friend, I didn’t know.
It’s hard. My wife still misses her Brigit and she died in 1998. And still misses Liesl who died in 2018.
Heck, even though I have Kegan-boy I still reach for Liesl’s spot expecting to feel her.
It’s hard. Doesn’t get easy, but it get’s more bearable. Not more painful or more better, just more bearable.
Thing is, we have to keep being the good boy or girl that they thought we were so we don’t disappoint them when we meet them again.
And, no, it’s not cheating to get another dog. If you do it right, you’ll not get the dog you want but the dog you need. That’s what happened with Liesl’s supposed replacement, who was supposed to be my wife’s dog but turned out I needed a dog more than she did (though he is a good two-person dog, he definitely sees me as his Alpha.)
Take care of yourself, Miss Adrienne. I’m sorry for your loss. We’re here to help if you need us.
X2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdtx-pxjX8A
Something you get through
The draftees during the Vietnam war are always denigrated. The draft worked for the US in WW2 and works for other countries today. How prevent failure if reinstated? There are indications current US youth are not physically capable of lowest physical standards previously expected. Is the expectation to remedy this shortcoming while in service or is it a lesser expectation? Leftist countries always implement a draft. This may come to be.
You can PT the lard ass into a lean-mean-fighting machine. Some people just need more time. Lacking motivation, they can clean the latrines of better men for their tour of service. Quoting “GSG Hartman” in Full Metal Jacket – they can polish them up so that the Virgin Mary herself would be proud to take a dump there.
Oh, it’s a lard ass. Send him/her to the fitness program for 4 week evaluations, keep it up until lard ass either breaks fully and is medically out or loses weight and starts taking in themselves.
Yes, there are 4-Fs out there, people who are medically or mentally not fit to serve in one way or another. But seriously, if the person’s main medical failure is fatness and slothiness, then that can be trained out of them.
Seriously, when I was still SCA fighting, I was overweight, like around 260-280 not in armor. Yet I could fight longer, harder, better than so many younger kids who would gass out after 5 minutes. I’d be first in armor, and fight or practice for at least half an hour (usually like a full hour) before stopping to take off the helmet and get a drink. And the youngsters would either finally be finishing getting in armor or already be armoring down. Standard fighter practice would run 3-4 hours and I’d fight until I literally could not move anymore, sit on the ground and slowly take the armor off and then load it up while most of the young kids were already gone because they were tired. Heat, cold, rain, ice, eh. Fatman was much stronger and healthier than skinny boy.
The 10 things from dogs is exactly right. They reciprocate unconditional love if you give them your time. Concur on the military service! I know it made me a better person!
WWW
+1 re. Hamilton
Rules for being a gentleman.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/rules-for-how-to-be-a-gentleman-from-an-1875-guidebook-the-final-chapter-miscellaneous_5092720.html?utm_source=andshare&fbclid=IwAR2mfaRre-votdTqrutqbCyzCVjacgHeFLw_hgeNzDxdhAuK4vnxYcV1HQo
First time I saw this it was on “The Art of Manliness”, a great website. Thx for the reminder.
My own military service made me a better man. It also taught the average Italian draftee a host of minor and major skills that served them well in life, from discipline, sewing, being on time, respect to superiors, teamwork, and how not to get in trouble. And that’s just for starters. In some it brought out innate leadership for the first time. Everyone’s weaknesses were revealed for all to see.
Also, I learned how things work in real life. I once entered a full elevator in Army HQ, with every rank from Private to LTC present. A Three-star came up, decided to take the next one, but seeing me happily asked if all was well. Knowing I had aced an all important assignment that made the Three-star look good to the COS, I cheerfully and manfully replied “Yes, SIR!”. The door closed, but I suddenly had all the elbow room I needed, and more. I proudly marched off alone at my floor feeling everyone’s eyes on me.
I’ve also seen the end product of almost thirty years of selective service. There is no comparing yesteryear’s draftees to the incredible human material that manages to stay in Italy’s armed services today.
A “Stone in Heaven” was supposed to be Poul Anderson’s Flandry Series’s Swan Song, but he added another a few years later to relaunch it. Times had changed, and it unfortunately did not take. Poul Anderson was a historian, well versed in Roman and medieval history, and a high ranking member of the Society of Creative Anachronism. This made his stories very interesting indeed, and a joy to read if you can guess where he found his real life inspiration. He ranks way up there with Jerry Pournell in my list of favourite authors.
I like Pournelle very much, but always felt that Anderson (though trained as a physicist) had the soul of a poet. Or perhaps “skald” would be more accurate. About the Flandry series, I believe that it took Sandra Meisel’s analysis of it to help Anderson realize what the series could be, and eventually did become. I liked ASIH when I first read it as a young man, but now that I have fewer years ahead of than behind me, I appreciate the book so much more.
Clearly I haven’t led the life of Vice Admiral Sir Dominic Flandry, Imperial Terran Navy, Intelligence Corps, but I too am grossly over privileged. I’d add to his list of blessings: having had the great good fortune to have found persons that I came to love. Some of whom, through some miracle I can but attribute to God, even love me back.