lil fox

Mostly I hate the city. But sometimes I see something I hadn't noticed before, either because I was too busy pretending the city wasn't swirling around me like an ugly, noisy, seeping cloud of smoke and despair, or because someone added something to it since the last time I looked a particular direction.

We came home two days ago and as I opened my door to get out, my eyes naturally lifted up and rested on this:

He's trying to hide, too, poor little guy. 

"Case Study"

Our Terminology professor gave us all a writing assignment for Friday--use ten words from the last two chapters of our Term book (dealing with the skeletal system and its components), and write a case study. If we had a real one that had happened to a pet or a friend's pet, we could use that, or we could invent one. I asked if I could make it fun, and she said yes. So here is my attempt to use ten veterinary terminology words in a vaguely interesting way, and also make my English degree not a complete waste of time.

Enjoy.

“Case Study”

(The Wanderer, 1818, by Caspar David Friedrich)

Brandon stood upon the crest, overlooking the natal grounds. He clasped and unclasped his hands behind him, pausing at times to check his pocket-watch. Today was the day. Since his brother, Ambrose’s discovery Brandon had put all his wealth to work for them, sure that no number of antique cars would equal the worth of what they were attempting to bring to life.

Ambrose had unearthed ancient osteoblasts in the stomach of an engorged mosquito, legs akimbo, frozen in time in a drop of amber. A hapless ant was also curled in death in the golden-orange jewel, but she contained no exciting discoveries for the brothers. Brandon realized, distantly, still lost in memory, that he was suffering from an anxious tetany, perhaps linked subconsciously to the spasms working inside the wonders below him.

Suddenly, he saw a movement. He hastened down the slope, almost losing his footing in the loose soil, and collapsed, kneeling, beside the large, multi-faceted ovoid before him. The sun hit his face and reflected his visage perfectly a thousand times over in the tiny, smooth areas of the egg. He saw some new wrinkles on his brow, but noted them not--they no longer mattered.

Ambrose was beside him in an instant--his equipment had also picked up the movements in the egg, and summoned him to his brother’s side. Brandon’s myalgia was becoming more intense, and Ambrose murmured close beside him that it was nearly time. Brandon fell back into his reverie, remembering the ups and downs of the last fifteen year’s work.

By far the worst time was when an intern, quivering and sweaty, had come to them and squeaked that he’d found evidence of epiphysitis in the extremities of the diamond-egg tenant. They’d woken experts in their field across the globe and flown them, bleary and cross, to the brothers’ labs. Realizing what was at stake, the experts had set to work with lasers and prayers to correct the issue, and had withdrawn, satisfied, leaving only faint seams in the developing limbs to remind the men, in xrays, what almost happened. Now they were about to witness the results of their work.

Now the egg twitched, moved from inside, and a spine shoved roughly through the egg’s membrane and impossible outer shell. It slashed away at its holding cell, and then momentarily stayed still. The brothers held their breaths, fascinated. The spike seemed to be made of the same substance and beauty of its encasing shell, multi-faceted, clear, and perfect, yet incredibly thin and strong. The amniotic fluid seeped out of the rend in the shell, and a long muzzle, attached to the other end of the spike, shoved its way out and made a whuffling sound. Suddenly, with a heave, the occupant pushed the rest of its shell aside and slithered out onto the grass, gracilis, long legs tangled together like a newborn foal’s.

“Looks like the osteoclasts did their work,” Ambrose breathed. Brandon could not yet reply in words. He reached out and gently felt up and down each leg and tiny, cloven hoof. The seams were invisible now. He grasped the forleg nearest him and firmly bent it in and let it extend again.

“Flexion’s good,” he said. “I think they did.” The brothers fell silent, watching the new life. A light, late afternoon breeze rustled between them, and roused the bundle of silken hide and slim bones lying in the grass; the little creature began scrambling against the ground, bringing its long legs underneath it. It succeeded, took a tiny breath, and heaving itself up, it whinnied.

Stories from Vet Tech: The Lot of Tech Husbands, and Hell Hath no Fury like a Cat.

All my professors thus far are women. Married women at that. This industry, like human nursing, tends to appeal mostly to women. In human nursing, that's beginning to change--the stereotype of female nurses is being beaten down. But it hasn't kicked in yet in Animal nursing. I think I've seen two men in leadership/teaching roles at VTI, and about 6 male students.

"It makes no sense," said Animal Tech. "I would love to have a man handy when I have to wrestle a 150 pound Mastiff down into lateral recumbancy."

For the men here, they have both more and fewer obstacles than the women have. On one hand, it's easier for the (generally) stronger men to restrain a large, frantic dog. On the other hand, if an animal has been physically abused, it's (generally) by a man, so the Vet Tech guys have an extra major hurdle to jump in winning the trust of biased, abused animals with PTSD.

But perhaps the roughest place for the men is as Animal Tech husbands. They deal with 3am ER visits for their wives and girlfriends with septic cat bites, and they must be flexible when it comes to strays. Luckily my husband is just as likely to bring home a stray as I am, but not all are as willing. With good reason.

~~~

"Best story," said Terminology. "We'd just gotten married. We were relaxing in bed, just enjoying each other's company, when I heard a noise. I turned on the light, and my cat had just had explosive, gelatinous diarrhea all over my new husband's pillow. We both freaked out and spent an hour cleaning everything, all the while me dragging towels around and weeping and begging him not to kill that cat. 'How much longer could he live, anyways?' I said. Well, he lived another 17 years. And he peed on everything. If it was on the floor, it was fair game. You bet my husband and kids learned to pick up their clothes real quick."

~~~

"I got this Golden when I was 19," said Animal Tech. "He died when I was in my thirties. He saw me through college, marriage, and kids. My kids grew up with that dog. I didn't realize it would destroy me when he died. I could not stop crying. Decided to try and find a dog in Pennsylvania or Ohio. More than that was too far. Well, I found this dog. This perfect dog. I kept coming back to her photo--there was something about her. But she was in Indiana. But I needed a dog. That dog. One day my husband came home from work, and I was under the kitchen table, cleaning up taco meat and crying. I'm talking Night of the Living Dead. Mascara everywhere. I hadn't had to clean food up off the floor for years because of my Golden. My husband looked at me. Now, he is not an animal person. If anything, he wanted just a little foofoo dog. One of those tiny ones. Something he wouldn't have to deal with too much. I wanted a manly dog. With teeth. But he looked at me and was like 'you want to go tomorrow morning and get that dog?' So the next morning we drove six hours to Indiana, spent twenty minutes with the dog, and drove six hours back home with her. She's been with us ever since."

And for heaven's sake don't breed your dog or buy from a breeder, either. If you think you require a certain breed because of how it looks/acts, you're doing it wrong. Shelter animals have all the personality traits (and a lot of the looks) you need and want, you just need to know what to look for (or find a friend who does!).  PLEASE get your pets neutered. So not kidding. 

~~~

"You have to be prepared," warned Animal Tech. "Be gentle with old animals, but do not ever underestimate them. This one time, some people brought their cat in to be put down. It was 22 years old. It looked like death. Like somebody had just draped skin over some cat bones. Worst mouth I had ever seen. Teeth like eugh. One bite from that one and you were going straight to the E.R. But it was completely emaciated, right? The owners said it had just gone downhill all of a sudden the last two days, and they knew it was time. So the vet and I took it back and are getting ready to euthanize it and I'm making jokes about how I don't even need to do anything to hold this thing down, I mean, look at it. And the vet was like 'yeah, scruff that cat.' And I'm like 'Really? are you kidding?' I was still fairly new at this. But thank God he told me to scruff it. The second that needle went in, that cat took on new life, freaked OUT. If I hadn't had it scruffed, it would've eaten my face right off. Now, of course, it was dead in like, two seconds. It was just like the last hurrah. Don't ever underestimate old animals. No matter how crappy they look. There's still life in there."

Stories from Vet Tech: New Friends, Amputees, and Cat People

I slunk into the orientation room on the third floor, little knowing I would, for the next eight weeks, spend 50 minutes here every day for Biology.

"This will be your biology classroom," said somebody.
"Students are not to use the elevator," said somebody else. "The teachers have to move large things up and down it frequently. Please use the stairs."
"Your lockers are in the basement."
It wasn't until later the painful enormity of these facts all cohered together for us.

As is the habit of many new students I religiously avoided eye contact with all other students, exchanging only greetings with my admissions counselor, and found an aisle seat near the front, for maximum powerpoint viewing. As is also the habit of anxious new students, I'd forgotten that 2 minutes prior, whilst still on the street outside, I'd texted my husband a message that would require a response.

Suddenly, unmuted, a nerd sound to end all nerd sounds began its alarm from deep within a zipper pocket of my book bag.
The girl across the aisle turned to look back at me while I fumbled the phone.
"Is that [nerd sound] your text alert?" she said.
"Yeah," I said.
"Awesome," she said, and smiled.
I'd made a friend.

~~~

"My kids were whelped in a vet clinic," said my Terminology professor. "They grew up knowing a heck of a lot more about animal medicine than any normal child should. But this one time, when my son was young, we were at a walk for Alzheimer's or something and we were talking to somebody else with a rescued Pit Bull, and my son goes 'MOM. Why does that pittie have four legs?' Poor kid. All we ever had were rescues from dogfighting rings and ones that had been hit by cars. They're all amputees."

~~~

"I'm a dog person," said Animal Tech. "I mean, cats are fine. I have nothing against cats. But give me a dog any day. Cat people are weird. At the vet clinic I work at, we had somebody bring in their cat to have it euthanized. She handed it over. The cat was already dead. I swear to God. They'd been carrying around a dead cat in their arms. The techs decided the least traumatic thing would be to pretend the cat wasn't dead. We took that dead cat and pretended to euthanize it, then just ushered the owner out and told 'em not to worry about the cost; it's fine. Go home. It's been a bad day. Yeah. They just handed us a dead cat.
You know what else cat people do? I had somebody with a bunch of cats. Whenever one died, they'd put it in tupperware. Just to hang onto it for a while or something. I don't know."

I thought to myself, I hope they at least kept it in the freezer. I should've asked.

"Actually," Animal Tech went on. "I should tell you guys, while I'm thinking about it... take cat bites seriously. I had a cat bite me right down to the joint in my finger once. Tiny little hole. I went septic because I was afraid going to the doctor for a puncture would make me a wuss. Yeah, ended up in the ER at 3am and was getting prepped for surgery by 6. I was in the hospital a week and almost died. Had three surgeries on this hand, actually. Seriously, you're not a wuss. Get that looked at. But moving on to the cat body language lecture... cats are great, you guys. I love cats. We have the best job."

Sin and Horses

Alright, folks, I have a depressing story for today.
I forget who made me aware of this situation originally, but there is a man, Todd Pierce, who has Riding High Ministries. From what I've been reading they mostly work in prisons and bull riding circuits, and operate their "seminars" under the banner of Trying To Encourage Real Masculinity In Our Culture Today Or Something by showing Todd Pierce "breaking" a wild colt.

(Spoilers, if you still refer to it as "breaking", you're doing it wrong.)

Taken off the "about us page" :

Our culture has done everything they can to suppress masculinity; but it is very much alive in these men. They are aggressive, reckless, vicious competitors, yet they are humble, compassionate and sincere. They believe manliness is the same as being Christ-like.

Wow.

Better.

Seriously, wow. Where to begin? If these guys believe that an ideal (godly) masculinity can legitimately be aggressive, reckless, and vicious, their methods of horse training are probably going to follow those trends. Which does not bode well.

Let's begin with some definitions (thanks, Google!):

Aggressive: 

--ready or likely to attack or confront; characterized by or resulting from aggression. 

   Synonyms: hostile, belligerent

--pursing one's aims and interests forcefully, sometimes unduly so.

   Synonyms: assertive, pushy

Vicious:

--deliberately cruel or violent.

   Synonyms: brutal, ferocious

Reckless

--(of a person of their actions) without thinking or caring about the consequences of an action.

   Synonyms: rash, thoughtless

Okay. Now I'm going to try to explain what I believe this guy is thinking about these words, as a Christian, and explain why they are wrong. He probably is thinking that Christ is aggressive in the way He has conquered death, sin, and Satan. Here's the thing, though; if a Christian knows that God is creator of the entire world (including Satan... who is a fallen, created angel, not God's evil counterpart), and all-powerful, there is no "aggression" needed to conquer Satan or the suckiness of the world. Without going into all the theological hoopla of why the world sucks so much sometimes, basically keep in mind God did not create evil. People disobeyed God and sinned. That is why the world is messed up. But don't panic! He is in control and has a plan.

Anyhow, back to Satan... I'm likening this to someone whose infant is trying to bite the parent's finger. The parent needs no "aggression" to stop this. He or she simply removes the finger from reach and says "no." The parent is in complete control. Christ voluntarily came to earth as a person, born in very poor circumstances, and spent his whole life on earth healing people, giving them forgiveness and hope, free of charge, and then quietly went and died on a cross for them to seal the deal.
Sorry, that is not an aggressive life. Christ was not aggressive. The only times recorded that He got angry at people it was because they were trying to put themselves, their hypocrisy, and their made-up rules between sinners and Christ. And then he confronted them, but it was not for His own interests, it was on behalf of people He loved.
If we want to hammer this point home for good (wow, what violent phrasing!), Matthew 11:27-30 conveniently covered it, two thousand years ago. For context, Christ has been talking to his disciples and such about John the Baptist preparing people's hearts for Christ's coming, and then Christ prays to God, thanking him...

 "My Father has given me all things. . . . 

Come to me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit; and you will find rest. For the yoke I will give you is easy, and the load I will put on you is light."

What's this? Simultaneously Jesus declares He already has control over everything--aggression is not necessary--and then sums it all up by straight-up offering rest and comfort in a domesticated animal-related analogy!

Booya.

I'm sorry, I can't do anything even vaguely redeeming with "vicious."
I think Todd probably thinks Christ is vicious on Satan or something, meaning He slams him hard for his disobedience and messing with us. But the actual definition of vicious is outside God's character: deliberately cruel.
Cruelty is having some sort of power over someone and using that to crush that person mentally or physically more than he or she would ever deserve. It is not gentle. It is not humble. It is brutal.

Proverbs 12:10: A righteous man regards the life of his beast, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.

This commercial collectively made every horse person who watched it, cry. 

Or at least tear up a bit. Like I just did, re-watching it.

I'll handle reckless just by sharing the rest of this story.
So this guy, Todd Pierce, posts a video on his personal FB page and it ended up going viral amongst a lot of horse people. Here is the video: Todd and his horse . Please go watch it. It's only 37 seconds.

Done? Okay, the video made me, and a bunch of other people furious. Here is everything wrong with this video that I can think of, seeing it, in no particular order. Firstly, this man is leading a men's retreat on horses in the woods. People who go on wilderness-type retreats are quite often not wilderness people. It is likely that a fair number of the men out here with him know nothing about horses, and need protection by having trail guides who DO know what they're doing. I was a trail guide for two summers. Believe me, you have to be super aware, communicate clearly and calmly, and sometimes definitely protect the public riders.

Lots of things can go wrong. Doesn't mean they will go wrong, but it does mean you have to be prepared for them, and do your utmost to protect against them.

Instead, Todd, without thinking, put himself, his horse, and all of those men and their animals in danger. You saw that horse careening around and running into the camera man? They were extremely lucky nobody got seriously hurt (except Todd, who apparently tore a ligament in his knee--more on that later). So if Christ gave his life to protect and care for us, this guy did the opposite, and put everybody and all the animals he was in charge of in danger.

Secondly, you know how people wear ear plugs when they fire guns?

Photo of Garrett by Dan Straite.

Yeah, well guess what--a horse's ears are much more sensitive than a person's. They're prey animals, and are super aware--listening and looking--ALL the time. You can give horses commands in quiet, low voices, and they do just fine. People who do hunt off a horse's back (and care about the horse!) will put earplugs in the horse's ears. Firing a gun three feet from this horse's ears was cruel. The horse was, apparently, young, and hadn't been trained about gunfire. If you have a good relationship with your horse and are gentle, it is fairly simple and straightforward to teach a horse not to be afraid of loud noises. But it has to be done patiently and kindly. This man failed miserably. This horse, if anything, just learned that gunfire is horrifying and the best reaction is definitely to freak out, pitch the idiot off your back, and get the hell outta there.

Being a cynical and terrible person, my first analogy to this "desensitizing" Todd performed was wondering if his way of "desensitizing" his virgin bride on their wedding night (I have no idea of his marital status, I'm just making all this up) was to just pound her as hard as possible and assume she'll still want a round two!

Seriously.

So anyhow, a lot of people got really mad about this (one of my big rage-inducers was seeing all the comments on the original video where (obviously ignorant) people thought the whole video was hilarious, and not, you know, HORRIFYINGLY DANGEROUS AND CRUEL), and I heard a rumour that Todd took the video down. But obviously he didn't, if it's still up where I could link to it. However, a few days afterwards he posted a status that ran thusly:

  "Specific prayer request from Todd: Two days ago, Colton and I were horseback riding in the mountains when a young fox ran out and the colt I was riding threw a fit. As a result, I got bucked off and tore a ligament in my knee. ... etc"

Yeah, sure. A fox. Okay, assuming this story is true, and he was unharmed by that terrific fall in his major fail video, it still speaks volumes that he hasn't yet responded to everybody getting on his case about his bad horsemanship. Know what it speaks to? pride. But definitely not humility, that he supposedly believes in.
Also, yes, horses are prey animals and dangerous because they're hyper-aware and startle easily. BUT, here is the thing. Accidents happen, yes, but if you have a solid relationship with your horse, that animal trusts you. You've taught it not to be afraid of sudden sights and sounds, you read the horse's body language and brain really well, and if your horse does startle at a fox or whatever, you really shouldn't have an issue. You exhibit no fear, and the horse, which trusts you, picks up on that immediately. Sure, the horse may shy away from the fox a couple steps. And maybe you'll fall off if you weren't prepared. But throwing a fit like the one in Todd's video? Getting bucked off? That's YOU doing something wrong.

Which moves me into my final part of this rant. Horses are not evil. They are not malicious. They are just horses. Some are smart, some are dumb. But they all think like horses, not people. If a horse hates a certain type of person (men who wear hats, men in general, women in general, etc) it is because that animal has suffered trauma at the hands of a person fitting that description. It doesn't even have to be the person doing something wrong. The person could slip in the stall with the foal and accidentally bring a water bucket down on the foal's face and now that foal is terrified of water buckets and people in its stall and will misbehave, sometimes dangerously. The person didn't do anything cruel, but the person was still responsible for what happened.

Yet on this seminar page Todd Pierce uses a horse to teach the people that they are sinful and need to be obedient and accept Jesus ("my son"--see how Todd Pierce is making  himself into God the father, here?):

"The horse was spectacular. She was a three year old beautiful, well bred black beauty. Despite her pedigree, she was nothing but a prideful, rebellious filly that bucked and kicked to express her strength. Once she realized her way wasn't working and she saw I was waiting, she received my son and was made new. . . People saw the Truth and were set free."

(mistakes his)

Sorry, that's a bad analogy. The horse was probably freaked out because she was young, untrained, and surrounded by a multitude of people she didn't know, making lots of noises and staring at her. That's like putting someone in the middle of a stadium full of strangers, demanding the person put together a car engine in front of everybody, and loudly complaining that person is dumb because he or she doesn't know how to put together a car engine even though they've never been shown how before.

Look, I get that masculinity in our culture is hard to define nowadays and a lot of people think it means being a dick to everybody and never letting anybody see you cry.

So true.

And that is not good.

HOWEVER. Christians wishing to change that need to get over their own masculine hurdles. Todd Pierce is probably a very nice guy who loves his family and really does love Jesus. He is also reckless with other people's safety, does not consider the comfort of his animals, and can't spell (that last one is obviously his worst transgression). Nobody is perfect, especially Christians, but if you see something wrong in society, you need to make darned sure your solution doesn't have the same problems, slapped on a Jesus banner. So masculinity in secular culture is lacking in respect and care for others? Maybe you should focus on making sure your own approach isn't suffering from the exact same problems, just directed elsewhere.

Thank you, and now I will go get dressed and start being productive with my day. 

1. 
   

Khan-Rex

I have weird dreams. I was going to link you to my old xanga site where I posted all my weird dreams so you could peruse them at your leisure, but apparently xanga deleted it. Years of insight into my brain: gone.
I'm really kind of sad about that. In contrast, for funsies I googled my old Lord of the Rings fandom handle to see what is still on the internet from my elven days of yore. Sadly, an entire thread of me introducing myself on a forum is still accessible. Let's just say I hope to heaven that gets deleted soon--I couldn't even make it through a whole paragraph of what I wrote ten or so years ago without great shame and a desire to disappear.
I was an idiot. And that's being generous.

So I suppose this is all you'll get to read of my dreams today.

Last night I was a lead scientist on Jurassic-Park style endeavours.

Sadly, Jeff Goldblum did not make an appearance.

We succeeded (the science of it is a little fuzzy in the light of day), and ended up with some pretty rad dinosaurs. They were smaller versions of all our favourites, and of course we chose to only create the predators. Because look how well that's turned out before.

We were planning for them to basically be living theropod amusement rides; a few splashes of danger on all the business ends of our new friends, but they're miniature so it's nothing some good, strong leather tack and determination can't handle, right? Wrong.

We had some grand runs with our new transports around my parents' orchard, but as the dream progressed it became more obvious that not only had we managed to resurrect predators with their normal cleverness, ours had somehow been endued with an extra dash of something that meant they learned very quickly and could, you know, talk. It swiftly became apparent that their intelligence rivaled ours and all that stood between them and world domination was knowledge and opposable thumbs. What began as a reptile joyride ended in a cold war. We couldn't dominate them mentally into subservience, and to stay alive we had to keep acting as if we were on friendly terms, helping them learn while we shared frantic whispered plans between ourselves to try to find a leg up. We had basically become hostages to the dinosaurs and it was only a matter of time before they figured that out for themselves.

A good portion of the dream was taken up with this stage. During this time a personality emerged amongst our theropod captors--a Tyrannosaurus with the intelligence, charisma, and evil of Khan Noonien Singh.

You'd be taken in, too--admit it. 

The point still stands.

Now this is going to get weird.

First, all the other dinosaurs seemed to sort of drift out of my consciousness in the dream, this new character was so pronounced; so overwhelming. I didn't notice any of the others anymore. 

Second, some portion of you reading will sympathize with this, and some portion will think I'm either weird or perverted (or both), but bear with me... this Tyrannasaurus was stupid attractive. As in, I had a mongo crush on him during this dream. He was evil, sure. But evil never looked so good. 

For that portion of you I promised would get this, let me explain thusly: he was the dinosaur version of Simba from Disney's Lion King. Okay, now some of you get it, and the rest still think I'm crazy. But there is precedent for this. Just try googling "simba weirdly attractive" and you will get 684,000 hits. That is kind of a lot of people who have struggled with inner confusion over this issue whilst watching The Lion King.

Angst!

Please see this post from a random denizen of the internet if you don't believe me. I think she summed it up well (and also proves even if I'm crazy, at least I'm not alone):

"I find the lion Simba physically attractive. And I recognize that that is weird. But I know I’m not the only one! And Mufasa? Totally a GLD (Good Looking Dad). The part when he’s climbing up the cliff out of the wildebeest stampede? He is totally yolked in that scene. Like I wanted to touch his biceps. . . . of course Disney is going to make everyone attractive, but what really weirded me out tonight was that I was really into Simba. I feel like someone put a lot of thought into how that lion should look to make us care about him. You could just see what he would look like as a human, and he would be a hottie. Longish, wavy hair, strong jawline, deep brown eyes, tan, tall, wide shoulders."

So anyhow, Khan-rex (as I will affectionately call him from here on out) and I had a thing going. Well, to be accurate... in his mind I was just the only person close to being his mental equal, so as an adversary I wasn't too bad, and there was some interest from his side, but mostly it was me totally crushing on him and his brains. His appearance fluctuated during the dream. Sometimes he was full-on T-Rex, sometimes he was more anthropomorphized and started looking like a cross between a tall, long-haired football-playing Grover I've seen around, Garrett, and the theropod we all recognize as a T-Rex. But he was brilliant and charismatic and terrifying. He asked questions as if I was his superior, and we discussed things as if I was his equal. All the while I was half in love with him. At some point we were both looking out a window and talking and I turned to him and flat-out said "you are very handsome." He made no return. He'd heard, but it didn't matter at all to him. His mind was already on his next move. He was quiet another minute and then he requested clothes so he could blend in, and he left to roam Pittsburgh--presumably to map it and create his plan of attack for world domination.

While Khan-rex was out roaming me and the rest of my team of scientists were still basically being held hostage by the other dinosaurs. The whole while both sides were still pretending we were friendly. Then someone would just be dead. It was terrifying.

Somehow I snuck out, stole a car, and tried to get help a few times in Pittsburgh, but my forays were useless and I had to return. Some number of months later Khan-rex returned, more powerful, and with a suit of red battle armour (for this return he was 100% Tyrannasaurus). He prowled around, roared, killed some people, and then left to take over the world.

Years passed. We tried to create and join various resistences. But somehow Khan-rex had taken the entire human population and either beaten them to submission (as in our case) or brainwashed them into serving and basically worshipping him. The only people who held out were the Swiss. They and Khan-rex carried on a continuous battle with each other--neither gaining ground. I remember my perspective suddenly changing, though, and watching, third-person, as some brainwashed people got shoved into drones (not to pilot them... for some reason they would only fly if a live human being were inside), and then sent into the battles. The drones were light grey-coloured metal pill-shaped things that flew with tiny pairs of white, feathered cupid wings. But once up in the air the people inside forgot the brainwashing, realized what was happening, and begged the opposing forces to shoot them down. It was supposed to be some emotional scene in my dream that I got to witness this.

This came up in a Google image search for "depressing art". 

Appropriate.

Finally there was some headway. I worked it out so I stole a large truck from the outside world and the plan was for me to drive it back into our science research compound we'd been trapped in for years, pretend to be delivering the laundry for the inmates, and sneak my team of scientists out. But of course we were guarded. The outside of our compound already looked like Helm's Deep, but now the added guard station was set up to look like a gas station and it was manned by overweight, lecherous, brainwashed white trash guards. Khan-rex, having essentially taken over the world, didn't bother to visit anymore, so my crush was vastly out-performed by my anger and Desire To Save the World.

I had to flirt with one of the guards, but I got the truck into the compound, and began loading up my skinny, ragged, and exhausted scientists.  

And then I woke up and had to go to work. 

Well played, Sir. 

One Degree of Separation

I'm having a thought.

Why has individualism taken off so much in our culture? Especially in a time when I firmly believe we are more connected than ever. Perhaps as a way to escape that connection? I think it is good and healthy to have a positive view of the individual self: your body, soul, talents, weaknesses. But that needs to be balanced with the knowledge that your actions and decisions now have the ability to affect more people than even you dream of. And that is the thought I'm having.

1914. A hundred years ago. Phones, telegraph, snail mail. That's what you had, and the lag was incredible.

"Yes, I'll hold."

Home phones began to spring up in the late 1800s with service from the Bell Telephone Company. But they were not the commonplace things they are now. And their reach was still very limited. The idea of someone being immediately reachable through a personal phone in his or her back pocket was incredible.
About a hundred years ago the people in charge could use radios to talk in immediate ways, but the average person did not have the ability to communicate quickly with his or her loved one fighting in Germany.

With the advent of the internet, personal cell phones, cell phone towers, smart phones, and social media, all of a sudden we are able to have personal relationships and even daily interactions with people outside our town, and even across the globe.
Heck, humans are even capable of talking to each other in space, or communicating with our robots on an entirely other planet.

Curiosity, taking a selfie on Mars...

for you to see on your computer screen at home. 

I'm not saying all this connection is necessarily always profitable. You can more easily come in contact with dangerous people, or morally ugly things. Sometimes ugly things are painful, but good for us to see and recognize--such as injustices happening to others in another country (or even our own).
I think the benefits of connection outweigh the negatives, though.

Luddites argue that relationships on social media cannot be real relationships because you aren't meeting face-to-face. But by that argument, the woman writing letters to her sweetheart in 1945 did not have a real relationship. Her relationship was in suspended animation until he returned (or didn't return).
By that argument, my husband and I dating "long distance" when I was in PA and he was in NM was not a real relationship.
There are difficult things about having a relationship over distance. . . but at least you can still have that relationship.

Case in point, when I was five and lived in CA I had a best friend.. Mostly I think our relationship consisted of both of our tiny brains being fully occupied with visions of unicorns all the time, and tiny, tearful arguments over whatever issues five year olds have to argue about. They were probably about to our various personal horse-related toy collections and a normal five year old's unwillingness to share them.
Well, if not for social media, I would never have really talked to that friend again. Instead, we found one another on social media and discovered our characters, having matured almost 10 years, were still compatible. Our relationship now has vastly improved over what it was since it now involves fewer tearful fights. Now we can share fun things with one another we find online, and because of this new connection we have we can share parts of our personal lives with one another--her pregnancy and a new baby, and my job with horses--you see we've still not quite gotten over that old obsession.
That relationship definitely enriches my life.

Because of technology, 

I now know she would still appreciate this picture as much as I do.

Because of the connection the world now has, I can talk to my friend now living in Russia; I can follow updates about missions work I helped with in Japan two years ago; I can keep a close relationship with a best friend from college now living across the country whose life currently consists of a PhD program and people I've never met; I can make plans with my cousin in England to meet with her and her family during the few days my husband and I visit England for my brother-in-law's wedding.
These are all good things. Are they perfect? No.
But they are still good.

This brings me back to my original point--whether you think it mostly good, or mostly bad, we are all very closely connected right now. I haven't done much on this blog recently, so my traffic is low. But the country (other than the United states) that has been reading my blog the most, recently? Ukraine.
I've never been to Ukraine. I don't even know anybody from Ukraine.
I am friends with one person who lived in Ukraine for a year and sometimes follows me and my blog on social media. I have that aforementioned friend living in Russia who I know reads my blog and probably knows people from Ukraine. But that shows just how connected we are. I know somebody currently living here in Pittsburgh who once lived in Ukraine, and I know one person in Russia who might share something I've written with somebody he knows. And that is all it takes for me, not knowing anyone native to Ukraine, to have people in the Ukraine finding and reading my blog.

                         

"Americans are so odd."

I mean, my goodness--my little traffic ticker you can see to the right of this post shows that my site has been viewed by over 8,000 people. Now, a goodly amount of that is a smaller number of people viewing my blog regularly, but nevertheless... there's no way I personally know even 4,000 people. All the extra pageviews are coming from random online searches, and people being linked to my blog by somebody else. I'm on the internet, so my words here are fair game to thousands of people (or millions, if I got real popular, I guess).

So with this idea that we are all closely connected, we need to get rid of the idea that our actions and decisions affect only us. It is selfish to believe that, and, quite plainly, incorrect.

Example? Somebody decided that not getting vaccinated for measles would only affect him or herself. That person's home base is normally Pittsburgh, apparently only a couple blocks from my home. Because of the incredible connections we now have, that person went to visit people in New York. And, because we are naturally drawn to people with similar life experiences, at least one of those people happened to also believe he or she didn't need to get vaccinated (or else they both had parents who believed this, and the individuals in question never bothered to remedy the issue) because it wouldn't affect anyone else. So guess what? the person from Pittsburgh came back from New York, with the measles, and then rode a public bus a few blocks from my house and exposed countless numbers of people to the measles. You know who rides public trasit? A lot of families with very young children. Pregnant women. People with compromised immune systems because of illness or medication. That's who. Now there is the possibility someone is going to have a miscarriage, someone will get sick, and someone else will die... because a couple people in two different parts of our country did not realize how very connected we all are.

Someone far away makes the decision to leave his wife. I know the wife. I am affected by his decision.
I feel sympathy for the wife, and then am taken by a spirit of fear that the same will happen to me. My husband, who did not give me any reason to fear, is perplexed by my anxiety and feels somehow guilty lest he's caused any of it. My husband feels pain because a person he does not know who lives thousands of miles away caused pain to another person my husband does not know. I am the only connection between the two.

This connection we all have can be the source of great good--healing friendships, new, healthy romantic relationships, comfort through finding others like ourselves with similar interests ("what?" says C.S. Lewis of the nature of friendship, "you too? I thought I was the only one!").

But it can also magnify evil, or spread disinformation and harm. We must be careful.

Ultimately it's up to us whether an online relationship is healthy or not. It's up to us to recognize our decisions do not affect only us.


We have to realize things we say to one person may end up reaching someone else entirely. A foolish decision one person makes might cause harm to a hundred others.

Technology is neutral; humans using it are not.
Both are powerful.


And because that was so heavy a post, and I can't stay heavy for long, here is a picture of a hedgehog with marshmallows on it: