In 1729, Dr. Jonathan Swift published his idea for how to keep the children of the poor off the public docket in Ireland. It was quite simple and well thought out: of the stock of some estimated 120,000 burdensome children, 20,000 would be “reserved for breed,” including 4,000 males or one to every 4 females, “which is more than we allow for sheep.” The remaining 100,000 would be sold to “persons of quality and fortune” to provide them with “good table.” A further benefit to this plan would be that the hides from the infants could be used to make gloves and shoes and the like, as well as the fact that many of these children would be “papists,” thus reducing the number of Catholics causing trouble.
Here in Minnesota, in 2008, our problems are still apparently caused by the poor and the sick. Instead of using eloquent satire to illustrate the fallacy of certain arguments, our illustrious governor uses what has become known in America as “common sense” to quietly lay blame on unfortunates in this country who need social services. In modern American “common sense,” you say a lot of words that sound good and get people’s heads nodding, in order to keep them from thinking about the actual meaning of the words.
For instance:
"The state is overemphasizing social services and welfare at the expense of some other key priorities, like K-12 education, like higher education, and like transportation."
Actually means:
“The reason your roads are bad and your bridges are falling and your kids’ educations are failing is because of poor people and sick people.”
It is not the lack of a sustainable transit plan, which invests in a long-term infrastructure or the continued hamstringing of our public school system by a federal government and satellite state governments who are against public education in general; it’s not any of the other budget lines that consume funds; it’s because all the money that could be going to roads and kids is going to the poor and sick who are sponging off the rest of us hardworking citizens. So let’s divert funds from social services into the roads so that if you are on welfare and can’t afford a car, you will be spurred to get a job and buy a car.
This statement:
"[These programs have] already consumed the federal government's budget to the point they're in debt, and I don't know how they're going to get out.”
Actually means:
“Poor and sick people have gotten the federal government into debt.”
That’s what has gotten the federal government into such trouble, from surplus to deficit in 8 years: poor and sick people. It’s not a second futile run at full-scale supply side economics. Furthermore, it’s not tax cuts and breaks for corporations and the wealthy; it’s not the defense department and the two wars. Neither is it massive bureaucratic reorganization for uncertain outcomes.
Poor people and sick people are nefarious. Business leaders told the governor all about people who are trying to earn less so that their kids can have health care. And he nodded in agreement, having heard of the very same plot. It’s not that health care is such an important and costly issue to Americans that they would rather have less money in pocket than risk losing public assistance; these people are freeloaders who are scamming the system. Who asked them to have all those kids, anyway?
Employers complain about the high cost of health care insurance for their employees, and the governor tries to think of ways to help the employer because too many of those people are winding up on subsidized care. If you are a member of the working poor, and you make too much to qualify for subsidized care, but your employer does not offer care, you are pretty much a nuisance and are on your own.
Then the governor headed to Florida to stump for John McCain, because we know what is really important to him as the co-chair of the candidate’s national presidential campaign.
Is cutting social services going to alleviate poverty? That is what many conservatives like to say; that it is only the crutch of government aid keeping these people from entirely supporting themselves. If you remove that crutch, they can learn to walk on their own. Never mind that no one has their crutches taken away without a plan for rehabilitation. Never mind that in order for one to have crutches, one must have been injured in some way. And if you are injured in some way in America, you had better either have good benefits or plenty of cash on hand.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Water, Water Everywhere
It’s my latest crazy-making thing: bottled water. At a recent work conference, I think they went through four cases of the stuff, and I had no control over it. Had I control, it would not have been there in the first place. I was trying to figure out how to get a point across to people about the futility, frivolity, and wastefulness of bottled water without sounding like a crazed hippie, and when I could not figure out a non-preachy way to do it, I said nothing and just stewed.
Here are a few facts about that lovely bottle of Dasani, Aquafina, Fiji, Poland Spring, or whichever brand you choose to lug around with you, for whatever reason:
* It’s estimated that it takes anywhere from 6 to 24 times the water in a bottle of water to create a bottle of water.
* The UN estimates that if the world took ½ of what it spends on bottled water (100 billion annually) and invested it in water infrastructure and treatment, everyone in the world could have access to clean drinking water.
* The EPA has more stringent quality standards for tap water than the FDA has for bottled beverages.
* 40% of bottled water is tap water.
* Only 14% of plastic water bottles are recycled, and a plastic bottle in a landfill will take 1,000 years to biodegrade. Incinerating them releases chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals. 40 percent of the bottles that are sent to recycling are exported, consuming even more resources.
* PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles (plastic #1) are intended for single usage and some studies have shown that toxins from PET #1 bottles can leach into the water. These bottles are also derived from crude oil, consuming even more fossil fuels. Simply making the bottles consumes 17 million barrels of oil a year, which could fuel more than 1 million cars.
* 1.5 billion barrels of oil are consumed each year to produce the plastic used for water bottles (the equivalent of fueling 100,000 cars for one year).
* Tap water arrives at our homes through an existing infrastructure that is energy efficient, while bottled water has to be transported using fossil fuels.
* Water shortages have begun to occur around bottling plants in Texas and the Great Lakes region, threatening farmers and fishers.
* Dasani is owned by Coca-Cola, Aquafina is owned by Pepsi, Poland Spring is owned by Nestle.
* Bottled water can cost around $10.00 a gallon, which is more than a gallon of gas.
Get your annual water quality report from your local water service, which will tell you what contaminants are in your water and at what levels. My water here in St. Paul, for instance, is pretty good. Learning what is in your water can help you to make informed decisions about what kind of filtering system you may want to have, if any. Then get yourself a nice stainless steel water bottle, and bring your water with you wherever you go.
Here are a few facts about that lovely bottle of Dasani, Aquafina, Fiji, Poland Spring, or whichever brand you choose to lug around with you, for whatever reason:
* It’s estimated that it takes anywhere from 6 to 24 times the water in a bottle of water to create a bottle of water.
* The UN estimates that if the world took ½ of what it spends on bottled water (100 billion annually) and invested it in water infrastructure and treatment, everyone in the world could have access to clean drinking water.
* The EPA has more stringent quality standards for tap water than the FDA has for bottled beverages.
* 40% of bottled water is tap water.
* Only 14% of plastic water bottles are recycled, and a plastic bottle in a landfill will take 1,000 years to biodegrade. Incinerating them releases chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals. 40 percent of the bottles that are sent to recycling are exported, consuming even more resources.
* PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles (plastic #1) are intended for single usage and some studies have shown that toxins from PET #1 bottles can leach into the water. These bottles are also derived from crude oil, consuming even more fossil fuels. Simply making the bottles consumes 17 million barrels of oil a year, which could fuel more than 1 million cars.
* 1.5 billion barrels of oil are consumed each year to produce the plastic used for water bottles (the equivalent of fueling 100,000 cars for one year).
* Tap water arrives at our homes through an existing infrastructure that is energy efficient, while bottled water has to be transported using fossil fuels.
* Water shortages have begun to occur around bottling plants in Texas and the Great Lakes region, threatening farmers and fishers.
* Dasani is owned by Coca-Cola, Aquafina is owned by Pepsi, Poland Spring is owned by Nestle.
* Bottled water can cost around $10.00 a gallon, which is more than a gallon of gas.
Get your annual water quality report from your local water service, which will tell you what contaminants are in your water and at what levels. My water here in St. Paul, for instance, is pretty good. Learning what is in your water can help you to make informed decisions about what kind of filtering system you may want to have, if any. Then get yourself a nice stainless steel water bottle, and bring your water with you wherever you go.
Hot Chocolate
Sometimes, the simplest things can make me feel so shallow.
Last night, we decided to watch the movie “The Wind That Shakes the Barley.” It’s an Irish movie that was recommended to us before we went to Ireland. I guess that I was hoping for an upbeat, pastoral, pub movie filled with pints of Guinness because the emotionally draining, political dirge that rolled out in front of me was not quite what I was up for as an ending to my weekend.
That is not to say it was not a good movie. It just made me feel shallow, as I kept wishing for a song or two to appear. It follows the course of two brothers through their engagement with the cause for Irish independence in the 1920’s, and it’s not a chipper narrative. If you had any doubts about the brutality of occupied Ireland, this film will take them away. If you wondered how close humans are to becoming that which we most despise, this will show you. If you crave a cup of hot chocolate, made with real milk, cocoa, cinnamon, vanilla, and fresh spearmint, put this movie on, and I’ll probably make it.
I guess I am glad that I saw it. It must be an effective piece because I am still thinking about it and the issues that it raised. When does a cause take over our lives, including our rational thought? How truly different are we from those who we oppose? Is it only power that differentiates us, and were we to obtain that power, would we act in the same way? Is one quarter cup of cocoa enough for three cups of milk?
I would say that the cause has taken over rational thought when it causes us to no longer see our fellow humans as individuals with feelings as acute as our own; deep down, we are probably not all that different from those we oppose—they feel as deeply about their issues as we do; absolute power corrupts absolutely, and even the most benign of people will find themselves changed by wielding it; and one quarter cup of cocoa is the minimum. Start with organic, locally produced milk from cows who get to wander pastures, use honey instead of sugar, add a little cinnamon, vanilla, and a pinch of salt, and remember that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Last night, we decided to watch the movie “The Wind That Shakes the Barley.” It’s an Irish movie that was recommended to us before we went to Ireland. I guess that I was hoping for an upbeat, pastoral, pub movie filled with pints of Guinness because the emotionally draining, political dirge that rolled out in front of me was not quite what I was up for as an ending to my weekend.
That is not to say it was not a good movie. It just made me feel shallow, as I kept wishing for a song or two to appear. It follows the course of two brothers through their engagement with the cause for Irish independence in the 1920’s, and it’s not a chipper narrative. If you had any doubts about the brutality of occupied Ireland, this film will take them away. If you wondered how close humans are to becoming that which we most despise, this will show you. If you crave a cup of hot chocolate, made with real milk, cocoa, cinnamon, vanilla, and fresh spearmint, put this movie on, and I’ll probably make it.
I guess I am glad that I saw it. It must be an effective piece because I am still thinking about it and the issues that it raised. When does a cause take over our lives, including our rational thought? How truly different are we from those who we oppose? Is it only power that differentiates us, and were we to obtain that power, would we act in the same way? Is one quarter cup of cocoa enough for three cups of milk?
I would say that the cause has taken over rational thought when it causes us to no longer see our fellow humans as individuals with feelings as acute as our own; deep down, we are probably not all that different from those we oppose—they feel as deeply about their issues as we do; absolute power corrupts absolutely, and even the most benign of people will find themselves changed by wielding it; and one quarter cup of cocoa is the minimum. Start with organic, locally produced milk from cows who get to wander pastures, use honey instead of sugar, add a little cinnamon, vanilla, and a pinch of salt, and remember that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Traveling Blogs
I have numerous blogs. It confuses even me. There's the eco-blog on vox, the catch-alls on livejournal and myspace, and this blog on our Ireland trip. I am going to leave the Urban Ecosystem one where it is (http://kittywhumpus.vox.com/) and move the Ireland and any other travel-related items to http://kittywhumpus-gadabout.blogspot.com/ so that, if I ever get out of Ireland, I will be ready to write on our upcoming trip to Hawaii and any other trips we take. That leaves kittywhumpus to be what it is supposed to be: all over the place. I don't think I will go too far back in my other catch-all blogs except for a few tasty pieces here and there, but I'll be posting my musings on many subjects right here.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Iran so Far Away?
Sometimes it snows in Minnesota; not as much in recent years, but the past few days we have been hit with a couple of storms. Even people in winter climates tend to lose their heads with the first snowstorm, and they lose the ability to drive. It’s because people are not by nature logical, they are emotional. We become used to certain systems, and the injection of any new element into that system causes our responses to become skewed.
I was driving home yesterday, during rush hour, in a snow storm. It took me an hour and forty minutes to make it the 3.5 miles to my house on surface streets. I had plenty of time to observe all sorts of human behavior (as well as time to knit, believe it or not). The people around me in their cars were doing all sorts of things that they would not have done were the streets clear: clogging up intersections, creeping over lines, crossing over three lanes.
While I sat in my car knitting, waiting for traffic to move, and watching drivers try to squeeze a few more inches off of the distance home, public radio was reporting on the president’s news conference. It appears that, as with Iraq, our intelligence reports were a bit off. It appears that information was thinly sourced and based on less than rigorous methods. Again, officials were saying, we were wrong, but we could be right. Again, it seems like intelligence has been overstated to correspond with the administration’s rhetoric in order to ramp up a case for military action.
Not surprisingly, the injection of this new element into Bush’s system has caused him to be less than logical. But in his case, the system was already skewed to the point that he believes that he is behaving logically. Or at least, he acts like it.
Have you heard of the Axis of Evil? It’s not a rock band or a new hell-themed circus troupe, it was, of course, the triumvirate of terrible regimes named in George W. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address; the countries upon whom we, as a nation, needed to focus our fear in order for the federal government to squeeze dry the national coffers and bankrupt our schools, social programs, and local communities. Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are out there, and they are out to get America.
Well, we sure showed Iraq, and it seems we are going to show Iran as well. And just to make sure that we have the most satisfying flashback possible, George W. Bush is going to provide us with practically the same situation as we were handed in 2003: spurious claims, imaginary weapons, and repetitive propaganda. Does anyone else feel that not a moment has passed? Maybe for the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, we can bomb Tehran. What are you doing March 18th?
I have to wonder, is Congress smarter now? Is the American public warier now? Is the government going to reevaluate its approach to foreign relations?
It would seem not.
In September, Congress passed a nonbinding resolution naming the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. Currently, 57% of Americans believe that it was a mistake to send American soldiers to Iraq in the first place, which is more of a majority than Bush had in either election, but this means that 41% still think it was a good idea (2% had no opinion). In November, 39% of Americans polled still think that American will definitely or probably win the war in Iraq (the highest point was 49% in December 2005. All figures http://www.gallup.com/tag/USA.aspx). While the numbers in support of the war have gone down, I still find them to be alarmingly high.
And the administration’s attitude? Iran was, is, and will be a danger.
In October, President Bush was telling us that if we wanted to avoid World War III, then we had better stop Iran. All indications from yesterday’s news conference say that he still holds this view, even though he likes to say things like “The best diplomacy, effective diplomacy, is one of which all options are on the table” and “Why would you take time to analyze new information? One, you want to make sure it's not disinformation.”
I don’t know what piece of new information could be added to the current situation in order to cause change. Americans seem to be entirely un-phased by revelations I find appalling, and every time I think the administration can’t possibly recover, Americans sigh and change the channel.
Enough people believed Bush in 2002-3 to help get us in the present mess in Iraq, and it seems that he has the audacity to think that the same thing will work again, this time for Iran. A few news conferences ago he said that he could look in the mirror and feel good because he knew that he had acted on his principles. If that’s true, he is either extremely lacking in self awareness, remarkably uninformed, blissfully obtuse, or rotten to the core.
I was driving home yesterday, during rush hour, in a snow storm. It took me an hour and forty minutes to make it the 3.5 miles to my house on surface streets. I had plenty of time to observe all sorts of human behavior (as well as time to knit, believe it or not). The people around me in their cars were doing all sorts of things that they would not have done were the streets clear: clogging up intersections, creeping over lines, crossing over three lanes.
While I sat in my car knitting, waiting for traffic to move, and watching drivers try to squeeze a few more inches off of the distance home, public radio was reporting on the president’s news conference. It appears that, as with Iraq, our intelligence reports were a bit off. It appears that information was thinly sourced and based on less than rigorous methods. Again, officials were saying, we were wrong, but we could be right. Again, it seems like intelligence has been overstated to correspond with the administration’s rhetoric in order to ramp up a case for military action.
Not surprisingly, the injection of this new element into Bush’s system has caused him to be less than logical. But in his case, the system was already skewed to the point that he believes that he is behaving logically. Or at least, he acts like it.
Have you heard of the Axis of Evil? It’s not a rock band or a new hell-themed circus troupe, it was, of course, the triumvirate of terrible regimes named in George W. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address; the countries upon whom we, as a nation, needed to focus our fear in order for the federal government to squeeze dry the national coffers and bankrupt our schools, social programs, and local communities. Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are out there, and they are out to get America.
Well, we sure showed Iraq, and it seems we are going to show Iran as well. And just to make sure that we have the most satisfying flashback possible, George W. Bush is going to provide us with practically the same situation as we were handed in 2003: spurious claims, imaginary weapons, and repetitive propaganda. Does anyone else feel that not a moment has passed? Maybe for the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, we can bomb Tehran. What are you doing March 18th?
I have to wonder, is Congress smarter now? Is the American public warier now? Is the government going to reevaluate its approach to foreign relations?
It would seem not.
In September, Congress passed a nonbinding resolution naming the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. Currently, 57% of Americans believe that it was a mistake to send American soldiers to Iraq in the first place, which is more of a majority than Bush had in either election, but this means that 41% still think it was a good idea (2% had no opinion). In November, 39% of Americans polled still think that American will definitely or probably win the war in Iraq (the highest point was 49% in December 2005. All figures http://www.gallup.com/tag/USA.aspx). While the numbers in support of the war have gone down, I still find them to be alarmingly high.
And the administration’s attitude? Iran was, is, and will be a danger.
In October, President Bush was telling us that if we wanted to avoid World War III, then we had better stop Iran. All indications from yesterday’s news conference say that he still holds this view, even though he likes to say things like “The best diplomacy, effective diplomacy, is one of which all options are on the table” and “Why would you take time to analyze new information? One, you want to make sure it's not disinformation.”
I don’t know what piece of new information could be added to the current situation in order to cause change. Americans seem to be entirely un-phased by revelations I find appalling, and every time I think the administration can’t possibly recover, Americans sigh and change the channel.
Enough people believed Bush in 2002-3 to help get us in the present mess in Iraq, and it seems that he has the audacity to think that the same thing will work again, this time for Iran. A few news conferences ago he said that he could look in the mirror and feel good because he knew that he had acted on his principles. If that’s true, he is either extremely lacking in self awareness, remarkably uninformed, blissfully obtuse, or rotten to the core.
Friday, November 16, 2007
G-String
A friend of mine and I were talking about death today.
Actually, the conversation started with celebrity gossip. I found a funny icon on a gossip site that said "Scientology: Making celebrities pay for god since 1950," and shared it with her. The same post contained a video of Scientologists accosting a camera crew that was trying to enter a "Scientology Street Fair." Neither of us could watch the whole thing due to its high levels of blindness and stupidity; the cult members are irrational and confrontational, and the level of nonsensical delusion is painful. It's hard to understand what makes someone join a cult, especially one as patently ridiculous and corrupt as Scientology, but people have been flocking to cults since people were people.
Even more difficult to digest is that there are many millions of blindly devoted people in this world adhering to obviously false and hurtful doctrines, including political movements such as the one America has been experiencing for the past 8 years or so. It boils down to the same thing: corruption. Corruption thrives on insecurity and delusion.
In the video, one of the Scientologists asks the reporter "Did you take a break from beating your wife to come down here?" and they repeatedly accuse of him being "afraid of Hubbard" and only being there with a camera to "hide his crimes." None of it makes sense, and the reporter makes a mistake in trying to argue with them at all.
I don't think you can join a cult without at least a profound insecurity complex. I also maintain that it's one thing to join a cult, but it's a whole step beyond to raise your children within one. One does not have to point much farther than Jonestown or Waco to see that, but I am not even talking about such extreme events, I am talking about progressive damage to vulnerable psyches on a day-to-day basis.
Because for me, it's not just raising your children in a cult that concerns me, it's all religions. I think that such indoctrination at such a young age, before children have a chance to experience anything else, can lay groundwork for unnecessary psychic pain in the future. Giving them a lens before they have worked out how to see on their own can lead to therapy and a lifetime of clearing out the clutter of the church. When you have been raised in a religion, your perspectives will always be a bit tinged by that religion, no matter how much you reject it. Even in rejecting it, you are responding to it.
There's a lot of discussion going on these days regarding religion and god, from questions concerning its evolutionary role to experiments regarding brain function and electro-magnetic waves, and I applaud it. While I do not expect atheism to become the new "black," I applaud a few prominent thinkers for bringing non-belief into a positive spotlight. Putting "faith" under the microscope can only do humanity good, I say.
It's also very strange to me how one dead guy can hold so much of the world in such a thrall for so long. Personally, I think that Thor was much more interesting, not to mention the fascinating choices ancient Greece offered us. But there's something about the concept of salvation and eternity that really grabs the human mind. With the development of consciousness came the development of self and the understanding of mortality, and then came the fear, and thousands of years later, we are still killing each other over our fear of death.
Along the way, we have removed ourselves even more from the actual experience of death and made our lives more antiseptic, making it an even more unknown and fearful prospect. This while we see more and more death filtered to us through television, movies, video games, and the news.
I had not made the connection between religion and death until one of my friends found out that I am an atheist. His only response was "But then what do you think happens when you die?" I found this question to be illogical. What did that have to do with anything? I brought it up to Pete, expecting the same bafflement, and instead found that it made perfect sense to him; I started to realize that death must be what it's all about.
People need god in order to believe that they will live forever in some manner. Apparently, accepting that you will not live forever and living your life as such is not an option. I guess that's fine as long as you leave everyone else alone. Thing is, a lot of believers can't seem to do that, and their belief winds up expressing itself in repression, violence, suffering, or death.
Do I want to die? Not really. Am I afraid of death? Sure, on some level: it's unknown, and it could happen at any time. But my death would be of no consequence to me, being dead. When I think about dying, I think about Pete and about my family and friends, and what pain my death would cause them. God is not going to help me with that. If a belief in god is there to help some of them, then so be it.
I just wanted to point out that my obsession with celebrity gossip can come in handy sometimes.
(special thanks to Marina for the conversation and insights)
Actually, the conversation started with celebrity gossip. I found a funny icon on a gossip site that said "Scientology: Making celebrities pay for god since 1950," and shared it with her. The same post contained a video of Scientologists accosting a camera crew that was trying to enter a "Scientology Street Fair." Neither of us could watch the whole thing due to its high levels of blindness and stupidity; the cult members are irrational and confrontational, and the level of nonsensical delusion is painful. It's hard to understand what makes someone join a cult, especially one as patently ridiculous and corrupt as Scientology, but people have been flocking to cults since people were people.
Even more difficult to digest is that there are many millions of blindly devoted people in this world adhering to obviously false and hurtful doctrines, including political movements such as the one America has been experiencing for the past 8 years or so. It boils down to the same thing: corruption. Corruption thrives on insecurity and delusion.
In the video, one of the Scientologists asks the reporter "Did you take a break from beating your wife to come down here?" and they repeatedly accuse of him being "afraid of Hubbard" and only being there with a camera to "hide his crimes." None of it makes sense, and the reporter makes a mistake in trying to argue with them at all.
I don't think you can join a cult without at least a profound insecurity complex. I also maintain that it's one thing to join a cult, but it's a whole step beyond to raise your children within one. One does not have to point much farther than Jonestown or Waco to see that, but I am not even talking about such extreme events, I am talking about progressive damage to vulnerable psyches on a day-to-day basis.
Because for me, it's not just raising your children in a cult that concerns me, it's all religions. I think that such indoctrination at such a young age, before children have a chance to experience anything else, can lay groundwork for unnecessary psychic pain in the future. Giving them a lens before they have worked out how to see on their own can lead to therapy and a lifetime of clearing out the clutter of the church. When you have been raised in a religion, your perspectives will always be a bit tinged by that religion, no matter how much you reject it. Even in rejecting it, you are responding to it.
There's a lot of discussion going on these days regarding religion and god, from questions concerning its evolutionary role to experiments regarding brain function and electro-magnetic waves, and I applaud it. While I do not expect atheism to become the new "black," I applaud a few prominent thinkers for bringing non-belief into a positive spotlight. Putting "faith" under the microscope can only do humanity good, I say.
It's also very strange to me how one dead guy can hold so much of the world in such a thrall for so long. Personally, I think that Thor was much more interesting, not to mention the fascinating choices ancient Greece offered us. But there's something about the concept of salvation and eternity that really grabs the human mind. With the development of consciousness came the development of self and the understanding of mortality, and then came the fear, and thousands of years later, we are still killing each other over our fear of death.
Along the way, we have removed ourselves even more from the actual experience of death and made our lives more antiseptic, making it an even more unknown and fearful prospect. This while we see more and more death filtered to us through television, movies, video games, and the news.
I had not made the connection between religion and death until one of my friends found out that I am an atheist. His only response was "But then what do you think happens when you die?" I found this question to be illogical. What did that have to do with anything? I brought it up to Pete, expecting the same bafflement, and instead found that it made perfect sense to him; I started to realize that death must be what it's all about.
People need god in order to believe that they will live forever in some manner. Apparently, accepting that you will not live forever and living your life as such is not an option. I guess that's fine as long as you leave everyone else alone. Thing is, a lot of believers can't seem to do that, and their belief winds up expressing itself in repression, violence, suffering, or death.
Do I want to die? Not really. Am I afraid of death? Sure, on some level: it's unknown, and it could happen at any time. But my death would be of no consequence to me, being dead. When I think about dying, I think about Pete and about my family and friends, and what pain my death would cause them. God is not going to help me with that. If a belief in god is there to help some of them, then so be it.
I just wanted to point out that my obsession with celebrity gossip can come in handy sometimes.
(special thanks to Marina for the conversation and insights)
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Dead Cat Walking
We never meant to have four cats.
Some things just happen.
My long-term cat, Fritz, was used to roommate cats, and when I moved out on my own, he became insufferable. He was on me all the time; following me around, talking to me, sitting on me, and generally making me crazy. I decided he needed a cat of his own.
Enter: Max.
Max was an adorably tiny and spastic kitten, and Fritz took to him right away. He was also the cleanest kitten in the world as well as the most interactive cat toy ever purchased. While he did keep me up and get into a lot of things around the apartment, he was good for Fritz.
Sometime in 2001, I agreed to watch a friend’s cat while they were away working in Colorado. During the time they were gone, I moved into a house, bringing my two cats and her cat, Hazel, with me. They returned from Colorado, everything was busy, and it was September when she said “Do you want to just keep her?” By that time, I was totally attached to her, and so was Max, so I said yes. Just like that, I had three cats.
In 2004, I met Pete. Pete had a cat. In the fall of that year, we moved her in, in anticipation of Pete’s move a month later. Bang! Four cats!
She never adjusted. She hated the other three cats, who only wanted to sniff her over a few times and check out her litter box. She was a screaming, hissing mess, and she would not use her box if any of the other cats used it. Since you can’t explain any of this to a cat, and she was peeing on the bed, on pillows, on the rug, and pooping on the floor, we had to put her litter box in the guest room and close the door. Because she was not getting along with the other cats, and she needed access to a litter box, we had to put her in there too. The guestroom became a studio apartment for an old, grumpy kitty: food, water, toilet, bed. If she were a tormented artist, it would be interesting. But she was just a cat who had become convinced that she was the only cat, and the awakening to her misapprehension was rude.
It’s been three years, and it’s still the same. She’s our Flower in the attic. She hisses at the other cats when she comes out; she slinks around like a victim and Hazel and Max chase her because it’s irresistible; she won’t mingle with them; and she wants to stay in her room. We recently returned from a two-week trip in Ireland, and Asia seemed to be having new issues. Yesterday at a trip to the vet, we found out that either her kidney disease has progressed, causing an ulcer under her tongue, or it’s a tumor, and she is probably in quite a lot of pain. We decided to put her down this week, on Thursday.
This is a strange and new thing for me. My childhood cats died in my parents’ house, after I had left for college, and Fritz is now 18. I have never had to euthanize a pet. I feel a strange mixture of relief and sadness, not to mention a bit of guilt. Asia has been the casualty of my happiness. Pete pointed out that she would have gotten sick anyway, if she had never had to move into my house, and I know that it’s true. I also know that we did everything we could think of to make her comfortable and to fit her into the life of the house, but there’s this nagging feeling: her life certainly would have been better had Pete never met me. I felt bad for her then, unable to adjust and be content in her new surroundings. Here she was, happy in her apartment with her person all to herself, all that time, and then I come along and steal him away.
How’s that for anthropomorphizing?
I know it’s silly, and we don’t really have any other choice. That part of me feeling relief is going to be so happy to have that room back; to be able to clean it out and leave the door open; to be able to have guests; to not have to clean cat pee out futons and comforters.
Until then, we are living in a house with a cat who is under a death sentence that we prescribed. I can’t look at her without thinking about it and feeling terrible in many ways. I brought her out to sit with me on the couch for awhile, but it wasn’t making her happy; I was only doing it for me. Because I could not do anything for her, I could not seem to do anything. I didn’t want to clean or knit, read or write. I sat on the couch and watched “Dancing with the Stars” and “The Bachelor,” two things I have never done in my entire life and which certainly did not make me happy. I was not reveling in the decency and loveliness of my fellow humans. It was a bit of a rude awakening.
I guess that is how Asia has felt for three years.
Some things just happen.
My long-term cat, Fritz, was used to roommate cats, and when I moved out on my own, he became insufferable. He was on me all the time; following me around, talking to me, sitting on me, and generally making me crazy. I decided he needed a cat of his own.
Enter: Max.
Max was an adorably tiny and spastic kitten, and Fritz took to him right away. He was also the cleanest kitten in the world as well as the most interactive cat toy ever purchased. While he did keep me up and get into a lot of things around the apartment, he was good for Fritz.
Sometime in 2001, I agreed to watch a friend’s cat while they were away working in Colorado. During the time they were gone, I moved into a house, bringing my two cats and her cat, Hazel, with me. They returned from Colorado, everything was busy, and it was September when she said “Do you want to just keep her?” By that time, I was totally attached to her, and so was Max, so I said yes. Just like that, I had three cats.
In 2004, I met Pete. Pete had a cat. In the fall of that year, we moved her in, in anticipation of Pete’s move a month later. Bang! Four cats!
She never adjusted. She hated the other three cats, who only wanted to sniff her over a few times and check out her litter box. She was a screaming, hissing mess, and she would not use her box if any of the other cats used it. Since you can’t explain any of this to a cat, and she was peeing on the bed, on pillows, on the rug, and pooping on the floor, we had to put her litter box in the guest room and close the door. Because she was not getting along with the other cats, and she needed access to a litter box, we had to put her in there too. The guestroom became a studio apartment for an old, grumpy kitty: food, water, toilet, bed. If she were a tormented artist, it would be interesting. But she was just a cat who had become convinced that she was the only cat, and the awakening to her misapprehension was rude.
It’s been three years, and it’s still the same. She’s our Flower in the attic. She hisses at the other cats when she comes out; she slinks around like a victim and Hazel and Max chase her because it’s irresistible; she won’t mingle with them; and she wants to stay in her room. We recently returned from a two-week trip in Ireland, and Asia seemed to be having new issues. Yesterday at a trip to the vet, we found out that either her kidney disease has progressed, causing an ulcer under her tongue, or it’s a tumor, and she is probably in quite a lot of pain. We decided to put her down this week, on Thursday.
This is a strange and new thing for me. My childhood cats died in my parents’ house, after I had left for college, and Fritz is now 18. I have never had to euthanize a pet. I feel a strange mixture of relief and sadness, not to mention a bit of guilt. Asia has been the casualty of my happiness. Pete pointed out that she would have gotten sick anyway, if she had never had to move into my house, and I know that it’s true. I also know that we did everything we could think of to make her comfortable and to fit her into the life of the house, but there’s this nagging feeling: her life certainly would have been better had Pete never met me. I felt bad for her then, unable to adjust and be content in her new surroundings. Here she was, happy in her apartment with her person all to herself, all that time, and then I come along and steal him away.
How’s that for anthropomorphizing?
I know it’s silly, and we don’t really have any other choice. That part of me feeling relief is going to be so happy to have that room back; to be able to clean it out and leave the door open; to be able to have guests; to not have to clean cat pee out futons and comforters.
Until then, we are living in a house with a cat who is under a death sentence that we prescribed. I can’t look at her without thinking about it and feeling terrible in many ways. I brought her out to sit with me on the couch for awhile, but it wasn’t making her happy; I was only doing it for me. Because I could not do anything for her, I could not seem to do anything. I didn’t want to clean or knit, read or write. I sat on the couch and watched “Dancing with the Stars” and “The Bachelor,” two things I have never done in my entire life and which certainly did not make me happy. I was not reveling in the decency and loveliness of my fellow humans. It was a bit of a rude awakening.
I guess that is how Asia has felt for three years.
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