Man's Inhumanity to Man's Best Friend

I was going to write about something entirely different this week, when this story caught my eye and I knew I had to change direction.

In a nutshell, the story was about a Pekingese dog that was abandoned by its owners in a suburb of Boston and died of pneumonia a couple of days after being brought to a local animal hospital.  But that's not even half the story.  According to the article, this poor animal was “ensnared in its own fur” and couldn't even see or move due to its severely matted fur.  He was covered in his own feces and, according to the vet who treated him, probably got pneumonia from “breathing in feces and bacteria for years”.  His owners could not even be bothered to drop him off at an animal shelter, so they just left him to die.

Stories like this make me sick.

Gandhi said that “[t]he greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”.  Given the frequency of stories like this, certain citizens of this planet are neither terribly great nor terribly moral.  What they are instead is terribly cruel, and that cruelty diminishes us all as human beings, especially when we tolerate such behavior either directly or indirectly through ineffectual legal remedies.

It's easy to treat the strong in society with dignity and respect, as we really have no other choice if we want to succeed and survive.  But it takes pure empathy and caring beyond one's own selfish needs to do the same for an animal.

To be sure, we as a society like to toot our own horns as being the “superior” species, above and beyond all the creatures beneath us on the evolutionary ladder.  We like to believe that our abilities to think and reason at a higher level, our advanced language skills, and for all I know our ability to text each other through our cell phones all somehow entitle us to the self-serving belief that all non-human creatures exist solely for the purpose of serving us and our whims.  We arrogantly assume that animals exist merely for our own entertainment, sustenance or usefulness.  But while we may have superior reasoning skills to those of, say, dogs and cats, we also have a far greater capacity for cruelty.

If the sheer inhumanity of inflicting this kind of suffering is not sufficient reason for cracking down on this type of cruelty, then perhaps the more selfish reasons are sufficient:  Do you or your children really want to be around people that have such disregard for the pain and suffering of others?  Do you honestly believe that such people's antisocial attitudes begin and end with cats and dogs?   Personally, I think there's something truly frightening about any so-called human being that demonstrates such a lack of empathy toward another living creature. 

The fact is, we all get outraged and condemn the people who do these things and who otherwise neglect and abuse animals (and I use the term “people” very loosely), but it keeps happening anyway, doesn't it?  I'm sure part of the reason for that is that the legal penalties for such cruelty are completely insufficient, amounting to a mere slap on the wrist.   You're likely to do longer jail time for stealing a car than for torturing an animal.  It's about time that society and its laws took these cases more seriously.  Maybe then such stories would be blessedly few and far between.

When I was a child, I would hear that animals don't go to heaven when they die because they have no souls.  Sometimes I think it's their owners who have no souls.  At any rate, it's clear that people like the owners of that poor, neglected Pekingese have no heart.

Stories like this make me sick.

Scared Straight into McDonald's: Through the Clown's Mouth, Darkly*

*To paraphrase one Frasier Crane.

I'm going to get straight to the point.  I think there's a vast conspiracy among the fast food joints to scare the hell out of us, and I think it's been going on for a very long time.  How else to explain the ranks of psychopathic shills that have come to represent these fine establishments over the years?

Now, we all know that McDonald's has had a long history of having the second coming of John Wayne Gacy in an oversized onesie as their spokesman, and I suppose we've grown accustomed to that on some level.  (Still, whenever I see Ronald McDonald he reminds me of that needle-toothed clown from Stephen King's movie "It" ("We all flooooooat down here"), so I guess I'm not that accustomed to it.)  And Wendy's isn't much better, since the face of that franchise has been Pippy Longstocking meets "Children of the Corn" for as long as I can remember (which, granted, ain't that long).

But in the past couple of years, things seem to have gone to a whole other level.  And, for me, it all starts with Dairy Queen, unless you somehow think it's normal to have a big, disembodied mouth full of big, disembodied teeth pitching DQ's fine assortment of fried meats and frozen treats.  (I believe there might even be some lip-smackin' tongue action in there as well, which I guess was designed to show yumminess but was just a bit too much evil-and-good-cheer-chumminess for my taste, know what I mean?)  Let's just say I can practically envision a cutlass between those layers of pearly whites.  I'm thinking if the giant chattery teeth in that Stephen King story of the same name had a vocation, this would be it.  Just a-grinnin' and a-killin' (and a-supersizin') all the way to the drive-through window.

Or maybe, just maybe, those big DQ lips bring me back to the rubber retainer I had to wear for two years after getting my braces off.  Either way, just a-grinnin' and a-killin' (and a supersizin').  (Hey, wearing a HOCKEY PUCK in your mouth just does things to a kid, that's all I'm sayin'.)  At any rate, I find it really hard to concentrate on fast food happiness in the face of such nasty imagery.  (In fact, I think I had a bad dream about that big, scary mouth the first time I saw it, though it might've just been Bill O'Reilly on late night, an even bigger and scarier mouth....)

And speaking of a-grinnin' and a-killin', if it all begins with Dairy Queen, then it begins, ends and middles with big BK (notice the resemblance to BTK?).  'Cos personally, I don't think there's much that can compete with Burger King's, um, "Burger King" (clever, eh?) for sheer nightmare-inducing potential.  I find myself wondering (and not for the first time) what these marketing people could possibly have been thinking when they came up with this one.  Let's see:  If clowns aren't scary enough, let's put a vacant-eyed, shiny-faced DOLL with an Elizabethan fetish and a maniacal grin into the mix and break out a big ol' can o' whoopass in tights.  Yeah!  No.  Just...no.

I still haven't quite decided if the intent is to show us that the Burger King is a pervert, a homicidal maniac, or a perverted homicidal maniac.  I can't believe it matters at this point (since it's six of one, 6-to-12-with-a-sentence-recommendation for the other), but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.  In the meantime, just remember that it's all fun and games until someone gets a bloody finger in their fries courtesy of "The King". (Oh wait, someone already has.  Think they paid extra for that?)

So the question remains:  Are the purveyors of fast food deliberately trying to tap into all the creepy symbols of childhood zeitgeist, or are they merely clueless enough to think that these things are somehow, well, cute?  (You know, the way parents think it's "cute" to regale others with your most humiliating moments to anyone who'll listen from the time you're old enough to embarrass yourself to the time when you're too old to care (but still embarrassing yourself)?  Yeah, cute like that.  But enough about me.  Back to the fast food thing.)

I don't know if this is a trend designed to intimidate us into eating more food that's bad for us (but OH. SO. GOOD), or whether I've just been watching way too many horror movies (most of them seemingly either written by, directed by, or inspired by Stephen King).  Could be it's both.

But I do know this:  The evil is spreading to other genres.  That tattoo-wearing, mechanical bull-riding sock monkey in those Kia Sorento commercials is really starting to work my last nerve, he and his Entourage of Evil.  (What IS that tall one-eyed red thing with the carbuncles all over it, anyway??)  It could just be that there's something vaguely annoying about a bunch of battery-powered toys and stuffed animals with superior social lives to my own.  But there's also just something about that mack daddy monkey that reminds me of a Stephen King story about a wind-up toy just a-grinnin' and a-killin'....Oh, never mind.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

Edumacation Rock: Declaring Open Season on the English Language

Remember those “Schoolhouse Rock” animated vignettes they used to show during Afterschool Specials back in the day?  I'm thinking we need to bring those back, because between all the bad grammar, bad spelling and bad language out there, it's pretty obvious that something's gone terribly awry in the public discourse. 

Now, I can just hear the disgruntled voices out there, complaining about yet another verbal assault on the great unwashed by a self-proclaimed grammar Nazi.  However, that is not my intent.  I'm not talking about minor infractions of those arcane grammar rules known only to a select group.  Unarguably, there are certainly cases where proper grammar usage sounds, well, improper (not to mention stiff and pretentious):  When's the last time you heard someone refer to a single piece of “data” in the grammatically-correct-but-still-dumb-sounding “datum”?  Nor am I suggesting I'm immune to linguistic error.  In fact, I'm sure that my own humble blog postings have their share of dangling participles, split infinitives and run-on sentences.

Instead, what I'm addressing here are the basics, people!  Just look around you, and you'll see what I mean.  Even as the diet foods we buy at the supermarket have “less calories” (the inference apparently being that overeating makes you illiterate, too), we are restricted to “10 items or less” at the checkout counter.  People have “exercise regimes” (guess there's been a fitness coup) while foreign countries have “hostile regimens”.  My own personal favorite is from a recent news broadcast where the anchorman referenced the proposed “beautification” of Pope John Paul II.  (I'm pretty sure the guy meant to say “beatification”, but since he said it twice, you couldn't very well argue that he just misread the copy, now could you?)

We've all heard that expression “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me”.  I don't know that I've ever believed that, since I've always been more of a “pen is mightier than the sword” kind of gal.  However, I do know that  these butcheries of the English language truly pain me (and my sensitive ears).  

Everywhere you look these days you will see misspellings, bad sentence structure and the denuding of our collective vocabulary through the assignment of value judgments to mere words (more on that later).  For the most part, I blame technology, popular advertising, and the “Political Correctness" movement for the carnage.


CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, WHAT'S YOUR MALFUNCTION: 
THE INTERNET AS ANTICHRIST

Subtitles notwithstanding, I have nothing against the Internet, per se (after all, I'm here, aren't I?).   However, widespread use of the Internet (and its minions) as a communication medium has resulted in excessive use of acronyms and partial words to save typing time; frequent misspelling and bad grammar by its users; and over-reliance on the spell check tool to do our thinking for us.

In particular, the increased usage of online and electronic communication devices such as email, online message boards, and texting has spawned a shorthand language of its own.  With all the OMGing, ROFLing, IMOing, JKing, ITAing and TMIing, people hardly ever see full words anymore, never mind proper English.

I also think that the “spell check” tool is not helping matters any.  I'm sure that whomever invented spell check had the best of intentions.  However, even as the invention of the hand-held (and cheap) calculator seemed to make simple addition and subtraction skills a thing of the past, so too does the “spell check” function allow people to turn off the spelling button in their brains.  Instead, people rely on spell check as a crutch, which means they rarely bother to understand language.  As a result, you see words used that are

spelled correctly in a vacuum but which are completely incorrect when taken in context.  Hence, some of the most common examples of incorrect grammar and spelling that I've seen online (most of which are punctuated with some type of insult to a person's intelligence, age, race, gender or looks) include:

•  “your” versus “you're” (as in “your an idiot”);
• “woman” versus “women” (as in “your an idiot and for every women...”);
•  “its” versus “it's” (as in “your an idiot and every dog has it's day”);
•  "to” versus “too” (as in “is it to difficult to ask why your an idiot?"); and
•  “jibe” versus “jive” (as in “you're facts don't jive and your an idiot”).

Actually, come to think of it, I think it's just one individual making all these errors, but you can see what I mean....

Notwithstanding all of the above, however, technology is only one of the guilty parties in this terrible troika.  Equally to blame is the constant reinforcement of bad spelling and “lazy” grammar through advertising and, to a lesser extent, our reference books.

YOU SAY POTATOE, I SAY POTATO:  THE CODIFICATION OF SLANG, BAD GRAMMAR AND MISSPELLING

Instead of maintaining language standards, we have persistently “dumbed down” to the lowest common denominator in society, codifying slang while in effect throwing in the grammatical towel.  One of the worst offenders:  Advertisements.

Simply put, advertising is a scourge on the English language.  In fact, I would venture to say that for as long
as advertising has been around, there has been a consistent trend to use deliberate (or not) misspellings and fractured grammar to promote products and services.  Theories vary on whether advertisers are doing this in an effort to speak to the “common man” (by using “our” language) or whether they are just populated by marketing majors who wouldn't know a noun from an adverb.  As a result, I'm not sure whether to feel insulted or appalled (and yet strangely superior).    Either way, Madison Avenue has been laying waste to our collective IQs for a very long time.

I remember growing up to the tag line “Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee” (a truly tortured double negative) and liking Pillsbury frosting because it “[s]preads as good as it tastes”.  Today, the cable network TNT promises “More movies, less commercials”, while Outback restaurant encourages us to “live adventurous”.  (As an aside, how does eating at a chain restaurant constitute doing anything adventurous(ly), bad meals and e.coli notwithstanding?)

And it doesn't end there.  The list of “cleverly” misspelled brand names is seemingly endless:  Acuvue Oasys contact lenses. Bonz dog biscuits.  Star-kist tuna.  Froot Loops cereal.  Reddi-wip whipped cream (two for the price of one!).  Is it any wonder none of us knows how to spell?  

It must be really frustrating being an English teacher these days. What chance does an English grammar textbook have against the steady bombardment of advertising slogans (which, after all, are designed to be memorably catchy)?

Meanwhile, each year the dictionary, which used to set the lexicon bar for us, has populated itself with slang words and phrases such as “yutz”, “wuss”, “google”, “soul patch” (don't ask, don't tell), “bling”, and “unibrow” (the synonym of which presumably would be “monobrow”).  Even “ain't”, a word which through the decades had been so reviled by the linguistic cognoscenti that it even had its own song of terror and woe, has been officially accepted into the dictionary (though, to my knowledge, nobody fell in a bucket of paint as a result).

All that being said, the dictionary does still have some standards.  As far as I know, former Vice President Dan Quayle's notorious misspelling of the word “potato” as “potatoe” (evidently referring to the little-known three-toed variety of spud) has yet to be embraced in print.  But give it time.

In all seriousness, when slang words become part of the dictionary, they not only “dumb down” our language; they also dilute whatever value these words may have once had as “out-of-the-box” expression.

 
I'M OK, BUT YOU'RE NOT (OK)

Adding slang terms to the dictionary is a case of common usage dictating grammatical standards, but the so-called “political correctness” movement (or “PC”, for you acronym junkies) is an example of social standards dictating actual usage.  Every year, just as poor erstwhile planet Pluto was banned from our solar

system and therefore our social consciousness as a “non-planet”, words that we've all come to know over the years have been virtually excised from our word-stock (at least in certain contexts).  “Used” is now “pre-owned”.  “Short” is now "petite" or “vertically challenged”.  “Fat” is now “curvy” or “real woman” (as I guess those of us who aren't “curvy” are considered mannequins (or is it “personquins” these days?)).  Not to be outdone, “hoarders” are being referred to as “over-treasurers” in some circles (of hell).

Everywhere, words that describe someone or something too directly are now verboten, destined to wither on the vocabulary vine, leaving us with not only fewer options but an imprecise terminology.  But what's the point?  You can try to police what people say (to some extent), but you'll never police the way people think entirely.  That's the way it works and that's the way it's always been.

After all, there was a time (and not that long ago) when terms like “moron”, “imbecile” and “idiot” were used as scientific terms to identify categories of lower intelligence.  It's only when people started using those terms outside of their original scope that the terms were deemed offensive or otherwise insulting (in short, words by themselves don't hurt people, people hurt people).  However, once you've established the precedent of assigning value judgments to ordinary words, it's just a matter of time before the new politically correct terms suffer the same fate.  (And, human nature being what it is (and what it is always seems to be something bad), they will.)

To some extent, I think the “PC” movement is also related to the “I'm ok, you're ok” and “we're all winners” era that ushered in the idea that we're all special and we're all good and talented in our own way.  Most of all, no matter how much we may stink at something, no one will ever tell us so.   

That being said, if someone were to tell us so, I'm sure it would look something like this:  Your spelling and grammar stink (and your an idiot).  JK LOL.  

Photo credits:

"Googe" screenshot of Google's homepage from February 14, 2007.  Photo used by permission and license of aetherworld.

"Potatoe Rama" sign.  Photo used by permission and license of lindsayloveshermac.

"Likker Store Open" sign.  Photo used by permission and license of quinn.anya

Footprints

I'm going to miss winter when it's over.

I know that's an unpopular opinion, especially in those areas of the country that get a lot of cold and snow. Oh, I won't miss the shoveling (mostly because my husband does it!), and I definitely won't miss the dicey driving on slick roads.

But there's something about wintertime that encourages introspection. The books we read are longer and meatier than what we tote to the beach. Our meals are warmer and heartier than the lighter fare of summer. Even the frigid waters of the ocean have a clarity unobstructed by the overheated crush of humanity in the warmer months. Because we spend more time inside, it's almost as if we're in a semi-hibernation mode. With fewer outside distractions, we turn in upon ourselves and delve down into our very essence, what makes us "us".

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking out the windows of my house at the white and frozen tundra that is the northeast in February. Despite the apparent stillness, hundreds of animal tracks dotted the landscape: three-toed bird prints on my front step; bounding piles of snow in a frantic pattern that can only have come from happy dogs in love with the here and now; the mincing, delicate pawprints of cats. In my sideyard was a steady stream of deer hoofprints showing the curious trek that took them over the fence and through the now-dormant garden. Some of the deer tracks even led right up to (and apparently inside) my open garage door. The crazy criss-cross of tracks was a snapshot of all the different creatures going about their daily business while I, unknowing, was inside and going about my own.

People often refer to this time of year as the "dead of winter". But everywhere I look, there is evidence to the contrary, captured in the winter snow.

I'm going to miss winter when it's over (at least until the first good beach day).

Photo used by permission and license of beautifulcataya.