Summertime Blues

Ya know, some days I can't help but think that the great mass of humanity is greedy, self-centered, idiotic, and venal wastes of DNA. Call me misanthropic, call me cynical, and you may well have a point. But I wasn't born like this folks - I got this way by paying attention.

Think that I'm suffering from an excess of bile? I offer the following four recent news items for your consideration:

The Cheat Market

Bush Takes Responsibility For Iraq Claim

How The West Was Lost

$10,000 or Skipper Dies, Says Dognapper

What did we learn here folks? In order...

1. People are using new technology to commit old sins. Progress is great.
2. The President thinks taking responsibility for what you say is important, at least if you can't avoid it. And you and I are considered too stupid to be allowed to know the details behind one of the greatest (if not the greatest) intelligence failures in American history. apparently, you may vote but you don't count.
3. Some money-hungry executive in Hollywood, lacking any original ideas, has decided to remake yet another classic of American cinema into a soulless clunker.
4. Some folks are really sick. This guy deserves a long, slow death.

But lest you think I'm hopelessly pessimistic, there are occasionally things that provide a moment of grace and a glimmer of hope.


Relationships with dogs are sort of like relationships with family. If Stella were a person, she would be like my Italian grandmother. She would sit at the kitchen table in a ratty bathrobe drinking black coffee and getting indignant over the newspaper. She wouldn't let me out alone due to a slightly irrational fear of strangers. When I was sad she would put a hand on my face, and say, "Why are you sad? No one beautiful should be sad."

And, I would love her not because she was always pleasant or perfect, but because I don't really know how to do anything else, and because, after all, she is my family.

OK, so maybe not everyone is rotten to the core. Don't you feel better already?