Blogosaurus Vex

Animal shelters are insane.  They really are.  I mean, I approve heartily of the mandate to rescue and protect and rehome animals.  But have you seen the process they want you to go through before you can adopt an animal?  The application forms are surprisingly intrusive, asking all sorts of stupid questions which will, I am quite sure, utterly fail to screen anyone who won’t be a good owner. Like security measures in airport, these provide the appearance of conscientiousness with absolutely no validity whatsoever.

Consider: Your animal adoption form asks, Are you aware of the coyote problem in this city and the risk to cats that are allowed outside?  I assume the purpose of this question is to screen out people who will allow little Fluffy into the street where he may become coyote bait.  But you know what?  No one is going to respond “no.”  People are not that stupid.  For one thing once you’ve read the question you are now “aware,” so it’s not really a question at all.  Looking at it generously, I would say maybe they are trying to educate, but if you’re trying to educate, just educate.  If you’re making an inquiry, don’t waste your time on inquiries which encourage compliance rather than honesty.  It’s like WalMart applications which ask, “Do you think it is okay to steal from work?”  Even if I did, would I tell you?  These sorts of questions don’t serve any function other than alerting the interested adopter to the opinions of the shelter.

Or this one: Does everyone in the home agree to adopting this animal? Again, who on earth would respond “no”?  What is the point of asking this?

But at least those seem peripherally related to animal wellbeing.  I think they’re stupid but I can see the intention.  Then there are the questions that are clearly irrelevant: When is your next holiday planned?  Fuck you, that’s when.  Guess what?  My holiday plans aren’t your business!  If I were going to Hawaii next month, would you reject my application?  What about next year?  What’s the difference?  Stupid question!  If you’re trying to find out how often little Fluffy will be left home alone, ask that.  Not that you should expect an honest answer from someone with something to hide, but at least be straightforward in what you’re seeking.

But my favourite is the home visit.  Lots of places ask whether you are willing to allow a home visit.  Um, no?  Why on earth should I allow a complete stranger into my home?  What, exactly, are they looking for?  More to the point, what qualifies an animal shelter staffer to determine whether my home is good enough for an animal to reside in it?  Plenty of clean, wealthy folks abuse and abandon their animals.  I can only assume a home check wouldn’t have weeded them out.  And I don’t think there is a happier dog than one who lives as the twenty-four hour a day constant companion of a loving homeless person.  This is incredibly intrusive and I am shocked that agencies think they have any sort of right to demand it.

And this the part that really gets me.  Not all shelters kill animals, but some do.  And some of those kill shelters still ask for all this information and demand home visits and whatnot.  On what moral authority does this rest when if the animal doesn’t get adopted you’re going to kill it?  Sorry, Mr Potential Adopter, we don’t like the look of your apartment.  Also Timmy, your youngest son, is not entirely sure he likes the idea of adding a cat to the household.  So we’ve decided to kill this cat rather than give it to you.  WTF?  Even if the shelter is a no-kill shelter, is it better for an animal to live in crowded conditions, or a cage, without individual attention and affection?

Shelters make a huge fuss about seeking homes for their pets.  Maybe they should stop making it so bloody unpleasant for people seeking animals.

And I say this as a vegan and someone very, very committed to animal wellfare: it’s just an animal.  Okay?  This is not a baby adoption.  It’s a cat, or a dog, or a hamster, or whatever.  Certainly it should be protected from suffering, but this is the problem: I don’t think there is any way to really accurately assess the suitability of a adopter.  Why they insist on making a show of it, I don’t know.  I do know it wastes a lot of time and potentially drives people away, like me: If I ever adopt an animal, I won’t do it at a place that wants to see my apartment first.  That is deep, deep into “none of your fucking business” territory.  I think the truth is agencies have to just tolerate the difficult, anxiety provoking feelings of having no way to tell for sure what kind of home the creature is really going to.

And I do think they should keep trying to figure out how to do a good assessment.  But until you get it, drop the preachy, sanctimonious, invalid methods.  That just pisses people off.

Posted in Critical Thinking, Ranting, Society/Politics | 2 Comments »

Husband got this letter by email from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia.  I am reproducing it here in its entirety for you, unedited:

The BCMA and the College of Physicians and Surgeons have been working with the BC Ministry of Health Services, Regional Health Authorities and the BC Centre for Disease Control on communication to you about the emerging swine Influenza A H1N1 outbreak. This letter is to reinforce information you may have received from your local Medical Health Officer about this issue.

Read the rest of this page »

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I have noticed an awful lot of mothers who blog, blog about how their children are so cute they just want to eat them up.  (Not literally… at least not consciously literally!)  Is this an oral rage thing?  Is Oedipus in there?  Some kind of sublimation phenomenon?  Any ideas?

Posted in Psychology | 1 Comment »

I’m home now.  And working on settling back in.  Travelling is so hard on me!  I am a confirmed homebody and I would never go anywhere just for the fun of going there – I wouldn’t have gone to California if it hadn’t been to see one of the giants of the type of psychotherapy I am learning.  So did I tell you that?  I was at a two day course about the therapy, comprised of lectures and tapes of the head guy’s work.  It was really amazing and I again feel humbled by the subtlety and complexity of this method, which he makes look effortless but which I know from painful experience is anything but.

Anyway, I hate to travel and once I’m travelled I resist attempts to go and do things, because the next best thing after being a homebody at home is to be a homebody at a hotel.  Swine flu provided a great excuse to read in my hotel room in the evenings and when all was said and done, I did zero sightseeing.  I sort of knew I’d only go out on Monday, but by Monday there were travel advisories and the WHO had upgraded the swine flu alert level and there were outbreaks of it in San Diego proper, so I ditched my plans for sightseeing and spent Monday getting on an earlier flight to come home.

I am disappointed I didn’t get to go to the zoo, which I really did want to see, but not too disappointed.  The thing I always want to do more than anything else when I’m on vacation is come home, and I did that, so I’m happy.  (The only sort of holidays I love without reservation are road trips.  ROAD TRIIIIP!)

So, there is not much to tell you about my holiday.  I imagine you are not very interested in the layout of my hotel room or the contents of terrible American TV.  But nonetheless I offer miscellany:

1. The pop machines (sorry, soda machines) take bills.  In Canada we have coins for the one and two dollar denominations and this makes machine-food purchasing a snap.  Bill taking machines are fussy as hell and twice I was unable to get a diet coke in the morning, which left me angrily shaking my crumpled one dollar bills at the fucking machine in helpless despair.  7am is too early to be denied pop when you have the freaking money.  Switch to coins, America!  And get a two dollar denomination, my god, what a hassle wandering around with wads of ones when you broke your five to buy a newspaper.

2. All the low level employees are brown and all the administrators/bosses are white.  This really freaks me out.  I feel like a plantation owner by proxy when the white concierge waves over a brown porter to carry my bag to my room.  I have never seen such a clear division of job type by race before and it was very unsettling.  I had vague rumblings of guilt about this the whole time.  Also, my hotel was a pretty nice one (remember how I hate to do things when I travel?  I picked the hotel where the conference was to stay in to minimize travel) and the lower level staff were at great pains to show me respect, calling me ma’am and bowing and such, which only compounded the yucky feeling.  None of the white desk clerks called me ma’am or bowed to me.

3. People in airports are stupid.  I was on the phone with Husband while sitting at the departure gate waiting to board the plane when there was an announcement that our passports would need to be shown along with our boarding passes to get on the plane.  This is standard and no big deal – actually security at the airports was significantly less assholey than the last time I travelled in the US.  Anyway, some rube sitting a few seats down from me drops his mouth open in faux outrage and starts saying, really loud, “What a bunch of crap!  I already showed my passport to security!  I mean, if you can’t even get that straight, what the hell are you doing running an airline?  What a bunch of idiots!  This is sooooo stupid!”  Mental note: make sure I am in line ahead of this guy.

4. Americans don’t realize 9-11 wasn’t a huge tragedy for the rest of us. I’m not saying it wasn’t terrible and a tragedy for those involved… but we weren’t involved.  I feel as sad about 9-11 as I do about any other global event causing many deaths.  I think it makes sense that it was much more meaningful for Americans than for me, because after all my country wasn’t attacked, my citizens weren’t the targets, none of my cities were damaged.  I do feel sad for those who suffered, and of course it was a terrible event… but that’s about it.  Twice I had someone mention 9-11 to me this weekend as though that made the final, shocking, blunt-force emotional comment on whatever we were discussing (just like “the nazis” which of course ends all arguments).  Both parties know I am not American.  In one example someone said, “It was an enormous trauma.  Like, imagine if 9-11 happened again,” and looking at me expectantly as though that should really say it all.  Note to America: Non-Americans are, in fact, not Americans.  There are other lenses through which to view the world.

Knowing what a big deal this is for Americans I hope I haven’t just totally alienated every American reader I have – really, 9-11 was terrible.  It was wrong and shouldn’t have happened and many people suffered and continue to suffer and I feel for you.  But it doesn’t define my life the way it defines yours.  It’s okay that I’m less upset about it than you.  You probably don’t care much about the Montreal Massacre, which is okay.  It didn’t happen to you.  (I realize it is something of a false comparison simply on grounds of number who died, but then consider Columbine, which had a less deaths than Montreal but is probably enormously more emotionally relevant to you.)

End of rambling explanation.  I still love you America, we just see things differently.

5. ENCHILADAS!

6. I saw no spiders.  Not a one.  Actually I don’t think I saw a single insect either.  Strangely sterile, La Jolla.

7. I am so glad to be home.

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So I have been trying to escape America and its swine flu, but the airlines are conspiring against me.  So I am killing time in the hotel until I can try going home early by standby tomorrow.  What have I been doing with this spare time?  Well, my brain fuses are essentially blown from my conference, so I don’t have much in the way of resources for useful activity.  Instead, I have been googling and discovered that, as a green eyed person, I possess the rarest colour of eyes!  Only 2% of people are greenies according to Wikipedia.  Information: my gift to you.  Indulging the thrill of exclusivity: my gift to myself.

Also, there is a series of Taco Bell commercials running here promoting Fourth Meal – the meal you eat after you’ve had breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Because that’s just what Americans need: an institutionalized fourth meal comprised of fast food.

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You would never know people are dying and the WHO is worried about a pandemic if you watched American news.  Actually, I didn’t know until Husband sent me a link from al-Jazeera’s english news source.  The network news that I’ve seen is talking about swine flu, but talking about it like it’s no big deal.  No deaths mentioned anywhere, reassurances that in the US no one has been hospitalized (inaccurate as I discovered), just stay home and rest.  But now that I think about it, they also said communities where swine flu has been found have been closing schools and public meetings.  So I probably should have picked up on that.  Of course, when there’s a serious public health risk, the news shouldn’t play coy!

In any case, the full seriousness of this problem is being enormously understated on the news here.  Which is no surprise, we all know American network news is utter crap.  I shouldn’t even waste my time watching it, but in the absense of internet in my room there’s not much else in the way of options.

So, if you were me, would you go to the San Diego zoo tomorrow, which is sure to be a huge tourist attraction, including tourists from Mexico?  Considering that, contrary to the bland reassurances of Fox network news, people are dying in Mexico of this flu?

Posted in Society/Politics | 4 Comments »

Do you miss me yet?  I miss you!  (I know, I know… how can you miss me if I never go away!)

I have the following to report about La Jolla: it smells like flowers here.  Everywhere.  It’s amazing.  Vancouver smells like rain, and I love that smell – but this is probably nicer.  You should try it some time.

Also, Americans continue to surprise me with how effin’ nice they all are, which is in stark contrast to how they look on TV or how they seem to behave in groups (especially groups of voters – two terms of GWB? WTF?).  Seriously, these are just the nicest people you could ever hope to meet.  I observed this on my drive across the northern states a few years ago and the southwest is just the same.  Nice!  As pie!

But oh, I cannot help myself… good lord but Americans are fat.  They really are.  Most are normal of course but the frequency with which one sees a very obese person is way higher here than at home.  And there is an entirely different class of obese person (extra-enormous?) that is virtually entirely new to me.  And I have to tell you this story of what happened to me in the hotel bar where I went for a gin and tonic, though I can’t decide if I should tell it to be funny or sad or what.  I will attempt to stick to facts and allow you to use your own sense of conscience to dictate the emotional tone:

The hotel bar supplies, free of charge to drinkers, a buffet of chips, pretzels, and deep fried chicken wings.  The wings are in one of those metal heating tray things.  For the duration of my stay in the bar, I observed many people helping themselves to wings (I had a lot of time to watch while reading and imagining what I would do if a stranger started to hit on me, a woman drinking alone, but it didn’t happen – the hitting on I mean, I did read).  Most folks took around 6 wings (they were really big).  In walks a very, very obese man – having trouble walking obese.  And he goes up to the buffet, and proceed to take every single one of the wings remaining in the tray – my guess is at least 50.  It required more than one plate.  He literally wiggled his fingers over the plates before hefting them and wobbling uncertainly to a table, where he ate them all up by himself.

Part of me wants to cry with laughter and part of me just wants to cry. 

Also, about five minutes later, some normal-skinny guy tried to get some wings but they were, of course, all gone – and he went, “Huh!” all surprised and disappointed-like upon beholding the empty tray.  I wanted to shout, “It’s him!  That guy over there, the one with the MOUNTAIN OF WINGS, he’s the reason you can’t have any!”  But I decided that would be mean and probably not funny so I didn’t do it.  But I was thinking it. 

Honesty.  I am all about honesty here.

Anyway, I have an early morning tomorrow so I should go.  There isn’t much more to relate other than that the water tastes funny and it’s humid, which I dislike, because everything feels vaguely sticky and that’s gross.  Also I should have brought my computer.  Never let me decide to leave it behind again!  I’m counting on you!

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I’m heading out to the airport.  Be good while I’m gone.  If it turns out that America has the internet I may post from afar.

Enjoy your weekend!

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Welcome to my adolescence:   Deity

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A blogger I read has had some recent run-ins with her charming 6-year-old and his curiosity about religion, and perhaps most noteworthy-ily (how would you say that?), the kid in question was recently excluded from playing dominoes by classmates because he does not believe in God (or at least does not profess, which is as much as we can prove – remember when I brought that up?).

Okay – I will include the link in case you want to read the sordid tale but for god’s sake if you comment, be nice!  This is, in fact, my favourite blogger and I love her to bits and want to just fold her up and tuck her in my pocket and bring her home with me forever, and if people got to her through a link on my blog and then were mean or obnoxious I would just die.  You are my emissaries and I lay at your feet the burden of civility.

This is the first of three relevant posts

This is the second

This is the third

That’s  lot of reading because she writes long posts (it’s part of why I love her) but anyway, I thought you might want to see the source material directly.

For those of you who can’t be bothered and have a finger hovering over the mouse right now, my summary above is actually probably pretty good in that it captures the essence of the main facts: two kids prevent a third (my favourite blogger’s son)  from joining in a game because only god-fearing children may play.  Excluded kid acts very well, expressing his thoughts that this is unfair, then goes and finds other kids to play with.  The next day he tells one of the excluders he thought that was unfair, excluder says he was just joking, all is right with the universe again.

I saw this as pretty typical in-group/out-group kid behaviour, in that religion was little more than a superficial excuse for kids being kids.  I doubt typical six year olds can really be such religious purists that they would, with the plan to keep it up for ever, exclude an agnostic child from all game playing.  And my hunch was borne out when the next day the religious kids basically waved it all away and said they were joking.  These are first graders, people!

But first graders become second graders and on and on… so it got me thinking about one of Dawkins’s favourite targets, the indoctrination of children.  As he says, we would not idenfity a child as a conservative child or liberal child – why then do we identify them as Catholic children or Muslim children?   Of couse I would point out that convervatives tend to raise up conservative children, so the lack of a label is probably moot.  But!  The point still stands: what do you think about raising children up in a church/other building of worship?

Clearly, it is in fact indoctrination.  Which is okay, this is what parents do.  You have to learn your principles somewhere.  But is a religious upbringing a good indoctrination?  I think it depends on the parents in question.  Taking Christianity as my example, I think you can raise up very nice and well principled/moralled Christians using christian teachings.  Or not.  The world has no shortage of evil religious people.  But it’s not a guaranteed outcome.  And a christian upbringing is not necessary for the production of adults you wouldn’t mind sharing a road trip with.

My intuition is that it doesn’t matter much in our part of the world, at least in terms of whether you are a nice person or not.  Whether you can be science-minded and a good critical thinker without performing some serious feats of compartmentalization is less clear to me (I mean, I intuitively find that harder to accept), but I don’t really know.  Of course if I have kids they won’t get a religious upbringing, but if I had a kid who one day came home and announced he’d found Jesus I would probably say “Okay” and keep on loving him.  People get to make their own decisions.

Or do they?  Because it’s no coincidence that christians beget christians and etc etc.  It’s pretty likely if I reproduce I’ll produce atheists (or at least staunch agnostics).  Hmmm.  Now I am back at indoctrination.

I would mind religious upbringings less if people didn’t have such a strong tendency to instantly latch on to self-identifying labels as tools for excluding other people.  I mean… if it wasn’t God they’d find something else.  But still.  As Julia says, there’s something extra hurtful about being excluded because of your faith or race or sex as versus just about anything else.

This is very puzzling to me.  Your thoughts?

Posted in Personal, Religion | 3 Comments »