My day

I went to a pet store today because I was in the area and a friend said they had puppies. Now, for those out there that know me, I am incredibly fond of dogs of nearly every breed and puppies make me happy more easily than most things I can think of off the top of my head. Needless to say, I wanted to play with some puppy dogs.

Well, I think I've matured in a way that I was not entirely prepared for.

As I walked into the store (which will remain unnamed here and in the comments, please) one of the first things I noticed was the location of the animals. Now, this is a store I had been to before and I have to say that they changed the layout. Instead of the somewhat-out-of-the-way condo-style crates along one wall, there were six moderately-sized crates sitting in the middle of the store. Each of these had a shelter dog in it, and only one was of adequate size. The breeds I remember clearly were Golden Retriever, Yellow Lab mix, and Shar Pei mix, but there were a few others and they were all big dogs, all under three years old. Two of them were INCREDIBLY wary of strangers and barked at just about everyone that walked by. Three had problems with other animals, and none of them seemed particularly happy to be there. This also seems like a good time to mention that about ten feet away from the last crate was a pen with four 10-week-old male puppies and another ten beyond that were two large cages full of not-quite-healthy cats.

One dog in particular, Jake, was the first I really noticed. As I walked in, a woman was kneeling by his crate. He barked at her, an angry bark that seemed to point to some abuse or aggression in his former life, and she backed away frightened. One of the employees started shouting at him and he turned to growl at the newcomer. I approached the cage cautiously, looked at the name on the top of it, and said, "Hey Jake. Hey buddy, what's the matter?" He looked at me and moved to the door of the crate, so I knelt down in front of it. He growled and I held out my hand, knuckles just barely inside the bars. He sniffed them, calmed down, and sat, looking at me. The employee who had shouted was still there, certainly looking to avoid some sort of lawsuit if I was bitten, but his presence wasn't quite helpful. Jake didn't seem to like him. I put some of my fingers in the cage and, after looking back at what was probably one of the only consistent human pieces of his day (the employee, of course) he licked my hand. He was calm for a while, which I used to look at the other animals. The cats were in bad shape and honestly the only happy animals were the puppies who looked like they had been brought in by a breeder. They had also been freshly neutered, but that's a completely different story (and I fully support spaying and neutering your pets).

I returned to the shelter dogs after a while and spent the rest of my time with one, a beautiful Lab mix named Daisy. Daisy was eight months old and a little skinnier than she probably should have been, but she was growing well and was full of that unbridled puppy energy. She pushed herself against one side of the cage and I started to pet her. She liked the attention and was wonderfully calm in moments. Another employee (not the kind of scary guy who yelled at Jake) approached me and indicated a few leashes and said, "You can get her out if you want. That's the calmest I've seen her all day." I thanked her and did something that I now regret: I opened up the crate and got Daisy out.

She was, of course, rambunctious upon release, but once I got the leash on her and got her into the large play area she was a happy camper. Now, as far as dogs go, Daisy was not the prettiest or the healthiest or the anything-iest. She was a shelter dog, and a young one at that. She would probably end up making some family very happy. She made me pretty happy for the five minutes I spent playing with her, watching her sniff and explore. The time came, though, when I had to take her back to the crate. Of course, she didn't want to go back in and it took another minute or so just to maneuver her inside. I was probably a little to gentle, and it ended up being Yelling Employee who grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and pushing her in. I gave her one last look before thanking the employees and leaving the store.

Now, on to why I said I regret doing that. Seeing those six dogs in that situation, being stuck in that big cold space in those stark, industrial crates, crammed in with animals that were unhealthy and people who didn't know what to do with them, I made a decision that I think I will try to honor more than any other I've ever made. I will never personally get a puppy from a breeder. I will never buy a puppy from a pet store. I might take a puppy from someone who didn't spay his dog and has no clue what to do with the litter, but I am pretty much only going to have shelter dogs. I will also likely have a dog any time I can financially support it and live in a place that allows pets. There are too many dogs out there who don't have good homes, and they deserve a happy life with good people to care for them.

I love my puppies at home and wouldn't trade them for the world, but getting puppies seems like a futile exercise to me at this point in my life. Puppies are great for little kids who can grow up with them and if you want to get one and train it that's wonderful. But, please, if you're thinking about getting a dog, go to the Humane Society, check out your local shelter or pound, and consider bringing home one of the millions of dogs that don't have another chance.

This is the Humane Society's national site, and here is a site that has adoption listings. I wanted to provide those, just in case...

Just a tiny post.

So I don't have a lot to say at the mo', but I felt like posting something anyway. I know, I know, quality over quantity, but that's not really the point of a blog, now, is it?

I wonder what it's like to dance on the moon. Who wants to go to the moon with me? We shall tango and salsa and watlz and do the Mashed Potato.

That's all.

Ten reasons I hate Naruto

1- it's a Really Bad Dub. Poorly edited and dumbed down for American youth. Actually, this bothers me about a lot of Americanized anime in general. Too often a crap company like 4Kids Entertainment gets hold of the rights to something that, in its original format, could deal with some mature themes and sensical storylines. However, as is referenced in this comic, the American company has a tendency to strip away character development and storylines with meaning in favor of marketability and Fox. When it comes to Naruto, let me simply preface my experience with the series by saying that I own the first seven volumes of the manga and have seen the episodes of the anime that corelate with what I've read. Maybe they did it in the original anime, too, but it is WAY kid-gloved, even in the first story arc. People die in that series, a lot, and I don't think I remember one moment of actual thought toward what was going on in the show. Everything was glossed over. "Oh, he's not dead, he just went away for a long time after being stabbed in 37 places."
2- those damn headbands. They look stupid and people buy them anyway. Seriously, you are not a ninja by putting a metal plate on a piece of cloth and wearing it around. Actually, the costumes in general bother me. No ninja would wear fluorescent orange, for one thing, and it's impossible to get any reading on the time period because while half of the characters look like 12-century rejects, the rest are planted firmly in the 1980s or the middle of the Emo craze.
3- terrible voice acting. I don't care what the Japanese OVA sounded like, cast for both character accuracy and a palateable voice. This bothers me the most in the title character. "SAUCE-KAY. HEY, SAUCE-KAY! LET'S GO KICK SOME BUTT! HAH HAH HAH!" I want to punch whoever it was that did that voice, and whoever cast her.
4- an unbelievable world. I can suspend disbelief pretty easily, but a bunch of magical 15-year-old ninjas running around murdering people in a weird hybrid of fantasy and modern fiction is just odd. They watch TV and ride giant frogs into battle. What? This also ties into the costume thing.
5- the ridiculous fandom. Everyone from nine to ninety seems to know somebody who is crazy about this crap. Seriously. And the ones who absolutely love it will tell you ALL ABOUT IT. Twice. A day.
6- the fighting. I don't care how much "ninpo" you have, you don't block a four inch blade with another four inch blade. It's stupid and impractical. And yet, all these little kid ninjas are running around having kunai-knife fights like it's a poorly-choreographed community theatre West Side Story up in here.
7- those hand signs. "Hold on guys, gotta focus my Ki and make some shadow puppets!" Honestly, this doesn't bother me in the show. It's the 12-year-old kid who thinks he can whip out some Sexy no jutsu of he just twists his fingers the right way.
8- jutsu in general. Jutsu in Japanese is a prefix that typically means "the art/ way of." So, bijutsu (美術) is the art of making art, and ninjutsu (忍術) is the way of the ninja. I'm no ninja expert (more of a pirate guy) but I feel like both the writers and translators just kind of go nuts with the whole jutsu thing.
9- Sasuke. I hate that little emo kid. Seriously, it's the whole "oh my gosh look at the brooding quiet guy every woman in the series has to fall in love with him despite his almost complete lack of expression because he's just SO HOT!" thing. See also: Edward Cullen.
10- the hype. People treat (or at least did the last time I thought about caring) Naruto like it's some sort of god-given anime that should be cherished. And maybe it is pretty decent, I only watched a few episodes. But I will tell you this: it's no Rurouni Kenshin, Cowboy Bebop, or Ghost in the Shell.

So, yeah, I've got some issues. But whatever, everybody has their own likes and dislikes. I'm not saying that if you like the series I won't like you, I'll justask you to refrain from talking about it with me. That is all.

Zombie Apocalypse Survival Point #1

I present to you this video that I saw on Boing Boing, one of the most popular blogs on the entirety of the net. Take a moment to watch it, if you will.

Now, what did you get from that? Kind of a freaky thought, eh? Disease-laden mosquitoes zipping around, reproducing wildly in our unused swimming pools and causing major health risks. Now, unless you happen to be unlucky enough to be around a lot of foreclosed homes with pools, this isn't a major risk to you as we slip into the autumn and winter months. In fact, there's no guarantee that it will become a major problem in more than a few concentrated areas.

There is one application of this hazard that I doubt many others have thought about, though. It's something that's on my mind a lot. I'm talking, of course, about a zombie apocalypse.

In almost every source of zom-pocalypse fiction, the survivors of the outbreak have to deal with the zombies themselves as well as looters, food and supply shortages, insanity, and the occasional thought of repopulation. What they rarely have to deal with, though, is disease. Think about it. Millions, if not billions, of walking corpses, shambling around and rotting at various levels of severity and not cleaning their pools. Mosquitoes use the pools as breeding grounds and populations skyrocket. Natural wildlife starts to die off due to disease, much of it transferred from the infected to mosquitoes to animals. These tiny insects would be terrifyingly dangerous to survivors, because a zombie infection is often transferred through bodily fluid if not only by a bite. Looking beyond even the thought of mosquito-zombification, there are still normal diseases to worry about just as much. Those don't really go away. West Nile and Lime Disease become as threatening to survivors in mild climates as the infected themselves, as do the animals potentially infected by bugs with any number of diseases on their own. So now the last survivors of humanity are restricted even farther as to where they are safe, how they can prepare, and where they can go.

This is, of course, suspending disbelief and expecting survivors to still be around after a couple months. Looking at a zombie outbreak realistically (this is where a healthy suspension of disbelief comes into play), the most important thing aside from containment would be eliminating outside threats. Pools and man-maintained bodies of standing water would have to continue to be maintained, a time-consuming and sometimes difficult process.

I think I'm doing my part here and now to save the world, one zombie apocalypse theory for survival at a time.

The Confines of Realized Fiction

Loss and darkness and the chill of space

Frozen, lonely, losing face

Breaking dawn turns skies to red

With dreams of you leaving my head

Understanding fates of men

I never knew I can begin

To see the consequence of sin

And lose myself down here within

The confines of realized fiction

The voices call from Babylon

Upon the winds I thought were gone

And as the bombs fall all around

I grasp at the escaping ground

Falling out of human grace

And writhing from your god's embrace

To settle in a warmer place

Where with my mind I can erase

The confines of realized fiction

Lacrimosa dies ilia

Qua resurget ex favilla

Judicandus homo reus

Huic ergo parce, Deus

But you know I do not ask

The man behind the fading mask

Forgiveness from his molding cask

I have my own sacramental flask

In the confines of realized fiction

Kick off your shoes and sit with me

On the throne of what could never be

And shake these tattered dreams away

That I may live another day

In the confines of realized fiction

So obviously I'm switching up the format of this blog a bit. Hadn't posted in a while, so I figured that now and then I'd post some lyrics or poetry or silly lists or whatever I had on hand at the time and still try for the daily thing, just without set topics. Hope you enjoy, and yes, I did write this and it does belong to me. Please to not repost or use without my permission.