Remembering Our Claw Buddy

Clarence Julius C. Z. (“Claw”)
October 14, 1996 – February 11, 2008

We are missing our former canine buddy, “Claw,” who went over the proverbial “Rainbow Bridge” about a year ago. He came to us from Basset Rescue of Old Dominion, back in 2002.  BROOD and rescue groups like it are a wonderful way to find an older dog with charm and character.

He was a goofy, nutty guy who craved attention and he could be very needy and whiny.  He had lived a rough life and he always thought he was going to be abandoned because he lived in too many homes.

Clarence always got a lot of attention because of his constant squeaky, wheezy whining and pathetic baby-like expression.

I remember vividly when there was a thunderstorm and I was lying across the sofa. He climbed on top of my chest and perched there for at least ten minutes, whining and panting anxiously and drooling foam all over my shirt.  I think I related to Claw well because I recognized him as a fellow tortured soul.

Clarence was a loyal guy.  If he knew you were hurt or in pain, he would often come over to you and whine in sympathy.  He did this especially if he sensed you were the victim of some terrible wrong.

Claw lived with us in slumburbia for about three years where he served as a faithful watchdog and friend.  This was back when we still felt fairly positive about our neighborhood and our house still felt like a home to us.  The photograph shows Clarence in late autumn of 2003, soon after he turned seven.  He loved walking with us in our neighborhood along with his basset brother.  We were happier and more comfortable walking around the neighborhood; more of the older and longer-term residents were around to say “hi” to and it was a more stable and less stressful place.

Then my folks fell hopelessly in love with him so I let them wrench him away from us.  (He was getting a little too hostile toward our other basset hound, who happens to be blind.)  Claw moved into suburban Affluenzaville down in the southern part of the county.  There he was spoiled shamelessly and lavished with love and as many canine accessories as any other empty-nester lapdog of luxury.

Losing him was very hard on us.  However, I feel incredibly fortunate because:

1. I was visiting my folks the night his emergency started.
   
2. I recognized that he was experiencing bloat and we were able to rush him to the nearest 24-hour emergency vet, Friendship Hospital for Animals.
   
   (That place is like the Sibley Hospital for the Washington canine jet set, by the way.  They offer gold-plated veterinary service with very capable and dedicated staff.)
3. We got to say good-bye to the guy and he left us gently, painlessly, and peacefully.

A Word of Caution:
If you live with a large dog, beware of bloat / gastric torsion.  This is a dangerous and often deadly condition where your dog’s GI tract twists or otherwise becomes obstructed while the stomach rapidly fills with gas.  Basset hounds and certain other breeds are more susceptible to bloat than many other dogs.  He was also in declining health and my folks had to spoon feed him all of his favorite foods (especially burgers), but he was still too weak and underweight.

---

Long live our Claw.

We know he is frolicking in some vast, green elysian dog park somewhere.

Ben and Babs, please listen to us...

I sent versions of this to Maryland Senators Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin.

Re Stimulus Bill  [orig. sent to NPR’s Diane Rehm Show]

The panic being shown by [legislative] Democrats … is hurting their cause.  They are forcing this behemoth through and shutting down too much debate in the center.

The level of hostility and arrogance shown by leftist Dems is undermining support for the bill by the hour.

Many centrists want this bill broken up into at least two parts: relief (transfer payments) and reinvestment (infrastructure and other targeted spending).  These areas should be hammered out separately.

Giving this unprecendented [scale of] power and money to technocrats coupled with such little accountability and reform is a potential disaster in the making.

Thank you,

--[Name Withheld] in Silver Spring [Wheaton], Maryland

[Senator Mikulski et al., I have been a loyal Democrat all my life; I switched to unaffiliated / independent this January because I fear that “hope” and “change” [are] not translating into dialogue and reform under the current incarnation of the Democratic Party.  Please do not ignore your progressive centrist constituents.  There are more of us out there than you may think.]

Octogenarian on Octuplets Controversy: It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.

Quote: “With our economy the way it is, with California going to hell in a basket, I should be excited?!  Doesn’t make sense to me.”

Me neither, lady.

Fact: This Whittier woman, the 87-year-old next door neighbor of the “miracle” octuplets mother would have been about eight years old when the Great Depression hit about eight decades ago.  Many of us remember being eight years old fairly vividly.  I sure do.

See the short segment on the BBC World News YouTube channel (duration = 1:58) for an example of how this story is being covered abroad.

Yes, this controversy has been festering for a while now, but this lady’s reaction is my favorite aspect of the story so far; she’s such a breath of fresh California air compared to, say, all the back-peddling fertility specialist experts.


Here is some not-so-fresh air.  The image at right depicts carbon monoxide (not CO₂) emissions over South America in September 2004 as recorded from NASA’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Terra Satellite.  See NASA’s excellent Visible Earth portal for more stunning images.

A question: Do crisis refugees have higher fertility rates, on average?  Consider the case of the Indian Ocean rim baby boom/boomlet soon after the December 2004 earthquake/tsunami.

This paper might offer some insights: “Mortality and Fertility Interactions” [PDF].  This was published by the Population Research Center, National Opinion Research Center (NORC), & The University of Chicago around 2003.



Now, as far as the octuplets lifestyle saga goes, I wonder if the bread-winning Iraqi grandfather who brags about his wealth plans to support his family with U.S. contract money for Iraq, courtesy of Bush and his neocon crony club of amateur nation builders.  (Sorry for that dig, Dubya apologist holdouts.  We know your disgraced figurehead has left for the warm climes of Crawford, but his legacy is to be found everywhere nowadays in These United States.)

Tip of the Day

Monorchid
“Oral Fixations Anonymous”
Let Them Eat… [LP]
Simple Machines/Dischord
1997

Help out the economy and your local aging punks and buy it locally.

Here’s a tip for when your neighbor on the other side of the party wall is playing the same s--tty music over and over and over. Especially when this music seems to consist of exactly two major chords and maybe an accordion. Or it sounds like thug music that would be the perfect accompaniment to a gang initiation rite.

Play this song/album. Another favorite of mine on the album is “Dead Signal.”

This track is great to play very loud, almost to the threshold of pain. It has this off-kilter, giddy, see-sawing guitar throughout.

It is awkward to do karaoke to unless you like doing sing-along primal scream therapy.

I sometimes sing the “i.l.l.…l.” chorus as well as the “i was a kid once” part. The middle part has intriguing lyrics but it’s hard to keep up with the rhythm. If you sang along to it at a show back in the nineties, I wonder if Chris Thomson would have cored you with a broken-off bottle neck. (After all, it’s all about some a--h--- who took his innocence.) Okay, so here are the lyrics; just a warning, they’re a little f---ed up.


“anorexic vampires i hear that fashion has failed you
so you smoke cigarettes and drink stale black coffee
oh it’s getting awful lonely for those anorexic vampires
so they f--- their little children ’cause there’s no one left

how could someone smile and look so i.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.?

well i saw your young frankenstein ms. anorexic vampire
he was getting the heel fixed on his motorcycle boot
do you hear someone knocking oh ms. anorexic vampire
it’s your little children are coming and they’re
going to stab you in the chest

how could someone smile and look so i.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.l.?

i was a kid once. i had my dreams and schemes.
someone asked me once. i’m going to touch you but you can not tell a soul.”

Now, where did I misplace those controversial trousers?

The New Mandate: “Thou shalt OBEY”?

I was a dutiful registered Maryland Democrat until January. I still support many Democrats, particularly the ones that think for themselves and stand up to their own party machinery at the risk of being politically/socially exiled by their fellow party members.

As for the hypocrites and sell-outs, that’s another thing entirely. Right now I can only conclude that most leading Democratic incumbents are either drunk on their own power, in an all-out panic about the global economy, or both. The almost trillion-dollar “stimulus” package (full title: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) is bewildering and massive, and the Dem leadership machinery seems insistent on ramming it through both chambers with a minimum of debate or compromise.

The full text is here on the HR website. Personally, if I want to read 647 pages of inscrutable text, give me Faulkner or Joyce instead. I think I need to look to independent academic / think tank types for insightful interpretation of this behemoth and its potential consequences.

How funny is it that Pelosi is co-sponsoring this bill with a Rep. “Obey” (D-Wisc.)?!