Thursday, February 22, 2007
"I love Jesus, but I drink a little."
So far Gladys Hardy from Austin, Texas, on The Ellen DeGeneres Show...Not from her now:
"There is so much old time religion in the United States (even Catholicism is basically Calvinism here) that most of the Americans I know have no concept of anything other than "Jesus Saves" and the "Wrath of God." Therefore they believe God is doing his duty in Iraq as they all either sit around waiting for Jesus to come and save them, or screw "Thy Neighbor" in every economic transaction. Since my definition of economics is a cultural one, that means in every aspect of life. "Gatcha!" -- although I don't believe is Orthodox Calvinism -- I believe the Pilgrims and the Puritans developed that ever-lasting catch-all as they were able to establish a landed footing from the Native Americans in the new world. You know, the same way one group of marauding peoples for centuries established themselves as overlords over other groups in Europe. This business of "getting the other guy" has got to be DNA deep, especially now that there is such a plethora of other things to go after to own and to eat!!!!!"*
To further their education, I suggest that they watch the following two videos (in that order):
- Boys Beware!
- Kinderen voor Kinderen song - Twee Vaders
(English subtitles)
*Can one eat (Iraqi) oil? Some brands of margarine seem to suggest it...
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 04:56 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Monday, February 19, 2007
Murder, a Gay Opinion
Two Quotes That Make a World
I, gay, on the same day stumble today upon the following two quotes:First, by (gay) author Justin Raimondo, on Antiwar.com, in his column Murder, Inc., as quoted by ISIL's Freedom News Daily of today, February 19, 2007:
“Support our troops? Hell no. Anyone who ’supports the troops’ is an accomplice to their deeds. The evidence shows clearly that these are not innocent babes in the woods: they are wolves, predators, killers, deeply, profoundly implicated in what will go down in history as a horrific war of aggression. The clear fact of the matter is that America’s conquest of Iraq is the policy of criminals — except that even most criminals act rationally, in the sense that there’s some profit in their activities, some benefit, real or imagined, to be gained. But this war is not an ordinary crime: it is a wanton orgy of murder that is all the more horrendous due to its utter senselessness. This is nihilism in action.”
Second, by Graham Bowley, a book review in the Financial Times under the title Bright sparks in a machine age [print version here], that originally had been published on September 15, 2006, but appeared in German translation in the Financial Times Deutschland today, February 19, 2007:
“Leavitt locates the germ of Turing's genius not in his education but in his homosexuality. His "outsider's nature" helped him to make creative connections that others couldn't see. An early (and unrequited) love at Sherborne, Christopher Morcom, died of tuberculosis. Leavitt casts the remainder of Turing's life as an impossible quest to regain this passion. His imagining of a machine that could think was an attempt to create a companion, the love missing from his life. The computer, Leavitt thinks, is even a metaphor for the homosexual - those who denied the possibility of an intelligent machine could be compared to those who denied homosexuals an independent mental life. Turing was set on proving both wrong.
Again, timing was crucial to Turing's success. When the second world war broke out, Turing was called to Bletchley Park where he helped build the "Bombe", the machine that deciphered Germany's Enigma code. After the war, he moved to Manchester to construct a new computer. He was shy, awkward, lonely. When in 1952 he reported a robbery at his home, the police uncovered his affair with a 19-year-old man. Turing was arrested for gross indecency and given compulsory oestrogen treatment, a form of chemical castration, which caused him to grow breasts. Later he was trailed by police who thought him a national security risk. Obsessed with Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he committed suicide by biting into an apple dipped in cyanide. Leavitt raises the possibility that the death could have been murder.”
Gross indecency and testosterone in Iraq... Both compulsory.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 09:28 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Actually only the president is at war.
Boom.
These are the two most significant (and significative) sentences in Fred Reed's "Theater of the Absurd, by the Absurd, for.../Ionesco as Political Consultant" I recommended in the middle of the preceding post as such fine American expatriate writing. The second (short) sentence is an example of the very delicate and laid-back humour of Fred. Follow him regularly: Fred On Everything.The important political mechanism described by Fred in his column is largely the same as happened with AIDS and it's still going on. People are manipulated and the money is flowing for those jumping on the bandwagon...
A friend of mine stopped fifteen years ago, because of "it", to have interpersonal sex (as opposed to self-service: a whole industry purveying the adepts of the latter with the necessary stimulants). He thinks he is intelligent. He thinks he is educated. He thinks he is informed. He watches a lot of TV. And selects only the best programs of course. He is not online, had you guessed?
My promiscuous health is better than his... Boom.
PS: Victory is infallible. Don't miss Fred's preceding column "Fred: A True Son of Tzu/Guderian Was the Mother".
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 03:35 PM GMT+1 [Link]
"George Bush is public enemy number one."
"Bin Laden is a poor second compared to him."
"The biggest threat to American values is not Islamist radicalism but imperialism."What else is new?
Bush wants the US military to "stabilize" Africa.
I am sorry to be late in drawing your (whatever) attention to the above important essay (yes, an even worse era is about to start and it may be useful to be warned right from the beginning, so that you can commit suicide in time instead of having to witness that upcoming mess, heaped upon the already existing one...): I had trouble in even finding it again, the author (CLS) having in the meantime produced his own heap, though incomparably better smelling, of blog posts consisting of mostly VERY longhornish ones (as good as in Texas), at least TWENTYONE of them in all, since that publication of this essay eleven days ago. You should read them all, as enlightening as they are, but hurry up, as the new ones are bursting in steadily. Their author no doubt has found a new additional vigor in his new place of residence which is famous for its spontaneousness, creativeness and daring. An American passport alone cannot account for all that frequent expatriate quality... ;-)
To make it short: the three quoted sentences starting this post are simply the three last sentences of the essay. An unusual quoting procedure for plugging an essay, but effective.
I further agree with the author when he says that "I think this issue to be incredibly important! Moves to intervene militarily in Africa will be far more destructive than our policies in the Muddled East. This is one of the most serious expansions of US power ever considered. Please spread the word about this essay. I rank it as one of the most important I've ever put on the blog."
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 12:18 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Mercy, Responsibility, Convenience
I chose this heading for what Jonathan David Morris is writing for us about euthanasia. Agreeing with the author, I'll add right away: mercy yes, responsibility yes, simple convenience ~~ definitely no! JDM writes: I am not against putting animals to sleep, but I think I should be clear in what I mean by that. When animal
shelters put animals to sleep because they don't have the resources to care for them anymore, I think that
is a travesty. Spay or neuter the poor thing and send it back into the wild, right where you found it! It
doesn't deserve to die just 'cause you captured it and couldn't find it a home! On the other hand, old and
desperately ailing pets are a different story. I believe pets deserve to die with some shred of dignity. If such a pet is in your care, you should care for it the same way it is has spent its life caring for YOU. If this means you make the decision to let it pass in a peaceful fashion, I do not have a problem with that. Of course, I totally sympathize with the other point of view here as well. If you make the decision to let your pet live out the course of its ailing life, I can respect that decision as well. As long as the power to put animals to sleep doesn't come down to a matter of your personal convenience, I can respect both actions here. I can also respect families pulling the proverbial plug on their relatives. It's a gray area. To be quite honest, I'm not even comfortable having this discussion.
I am not comfortable either. But I thought that we should at least touch the subject on this page which has often, in particular recently, been drawing attention to the great merits of animals, to their needs and rights (oh please, all you libertarians out there of certain philosophical schools, spare me your Cartesian bullshit here; animals, unlike humans, just "machines", but created by God...). In both of our topical cases (the sad passing of Raffi and Troll) a great example of the responsibility variant could be documented, in the case of Troll additionally the mercy variant could not be done without, but certainly no simple convenience was ever applied.
As someone with an unusually wide experience with cats (not only did my parents and myself always have dogs and cats [and other animals, without being farmers], myself later on only cats, but once about 150 of them at a time in a small country estate), I would like to help you and our beloved cats with the following advice:
- I am no great friend of spaying or neutering, that shibboleth of control freaks. I once had to assist an official veterinarian who was performing the sterilization of a female cat. His normal assistant was off duty, his normal duties were those of a civil servant, so his experience as a surgeon over time had become a bit lackluster to say the least, his hands were thick and broad, especially compared to the poor animal's size, his judgment of the necessary dose of anaesthetic had to be revised several times during the operation. I can tell you it was nothing that any decent person would want to see repeated. And quite different from the official propaganda.
- Whenever possible, one should at least allow a female cat to have offspring once. She has a right to it as it greatly enhances her health and gives her joys she could not live otherwise. And where would new cats come from? From a centrally planned state lab maybe? There are already too many cats (and other animals) in labs anyway! Of course, like with humans, there can be problems with pregnancies. That's a fact of "civilized" (= degenerated) life. One has to do something about that and it can be done. Good medical care or maybe choose a natural cat instead of one of those fashionable "products" that people buy like they buy bibelot for their apartment or brummagem jewelry for their dress. Cats need quality food too. Would you survive on the garbage in some canned food?
- The animal catcher is a horror figure well known to me from childhood as I read comics. I consequently associate it mostly with America. Though it exists elsewhere, it is by no means universal. If American shelters followed the advice of JDM, they would know where to bring back the animals. Around here some abandoned animals (especially dogs) that are found attached to a tree next to the highway are brought to the shelter, but mostly people fed up with them (the cute Christmas present for the children had developed into an own larger personality calling for responsibility meaning efforts...or a vacation is ahead...or the new lover has an allergy to cat hair) or not in a position anymore to keep them (that new apartment with no cats allowed was such a better deal and had such a nicer view than the other offers) or becoming ill, totally broke or moving to another country, etc., etc., will bring them themselves to the shelter, or if they die, someone else for them. How could one bring those back?
- My main advice will be a big warning. Most cats nowadays living in an apartment with no access to a garden or rather to a garden only which is far from being "the wild" and who since generations have known nothing else, normally taken away from their mothers much too early (wait three months, but you can choose, visit, get to know and care for your Prince or Princess Elect very early), simply never have learned what they need to know to survive in the wild, either because their mother could not teach them as that takes many weeks and a patch of wild or because she herself had not learnt it from her mother. Only about half of the required knowledge is provided by the inborn instinct, the other half is education. Cats after all are in many ways the most evolved animal in existence and the most individualist ones. Abandoning such an apartment tiger in the wild is a sure death sentence! Raffi was such an abandoned cat whom I saved on September 14, 1985, at the very last second, when he was only bones and skin, a ghost, having lived since probably a couple of months in the backyards of a block of houses from what remains of food for humans he could find there. There were plenty of birds, mice, moles etc. there; that did not help. Between those backyards and a church there was a large patch of jungle like wood; that didn't help either. Allow cats, animals and people food! Don't begrudge it to them! Don't be a miser on quality. That's real civilization. Mediterranean one. Or Indigenous one. Or Paradisiac one.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 09:49 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Pictures of a Growing Friendship
Good friends often are seen as miracles that somehow just happen, possibly because there are so many dissimilarities between people, or because of major obstacles which need to be accepted and adjusted to. But once friendship comes about, it always enriches our lives.[an author descending from the Cherokee, from Harriet Beecher Stowe, from Helen Hunt Jackson and from a great German great-grandfather from Baden-Baden]
I kindly request the owner and photographer of these pets to get in touch with me.
Regarding Harriet Beecher Stowe, one of the ancestors of the writer quoted above (calling herself a Heinz 57 variety of American), I stumbled, in Wikipedia, upon the following: <<In 1862, Stowe went to see Lincoln to pressure him to free the slaves faster. Her daughter Hatty, who was present at the meeting between Stowe and Lincoln, reports the first thing Lincoln said was, "So you're the little lady who wrote the book that started this great war.">>
Books don't start wars, little ladies even less so. False idols and liars do, who command the power of the State, having their and others' (power and) money interests behind them...
And: A war can never be great, dear Abe ~~ and dear Georgie. How similar in so many ways can you get! Let's prefer friendship and honest free trade based on dissimilarities, as illustrated by our animal friends above.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 09:49 AM GMT+1 [Link]
Sunday, February 4, 2007
A Monument for Troll
Is there a word for people who extend their sympathies more strongly for animals than fellow human beings? I'm the kind of guy who has always thrown his spare change in the animal jar, even if it's sitting next to the kids-with-cancer jar on the 7-Eleven counter. Animals are innocent creatures. All kids grow up to be adults someday, and adults are invariably assholes.
(Actually, so are most kids...)
My best friends in this city of Hamburg, Charles and Samara, a not yet middle-aged childless couple, tragically lost what they cherished most: their tomcat Troll. He passed on Monday, January 29. It had not been possible to save him from a vicious attack. Exactly two months after Troll and his mate Mimi had moved to my friends' new apartment (with garden), where they finally should have been living in peace, after all kind of attacks in their previous dwelling.
Good People Have Bad Luck. Bad People Have Taken Their Good Luck!
Charles and Samara have been going through hell for years, thanks to those assholes mentioned by JDM above and thanks to the German State (the "Law"; sorry for this excursion into comedy in a obituary, maybe you better look into this some other time), and were struggling round the clock to get out of it and return to former happier days. Gradually some little successes had shown and now this very unjust tragedy. When they need all the love they can get to breathe and continue their struggle. Fortunately they have each other, but Mimi is now a widow and Charles lost his very special friend Troll, with whom he could take those daily long walks, like with a dog (but no leash!), in their picturesque and lively neighbourhood, to the amazement of the passers-by.Troll could talk, speaking a language that Charles understood so well, and Troll "obeyed" when Charles called him. Who wouldn't "obey" a "master" who lately had so often spent the night in an armchair because he did not want to disturb Troll who had stretched out on the master's bed?... While Master State would rather spread out its ever broader arse over our faces to suffocate us in our beds...
Like all cats, Mimi and Troll are simply marvellous creatures. And they bloom when loved. But Troll was truly extraordinary. Even the best photographer could not catch all that one saw when observing him. So I am missing him very much too. I adored him, as I consider him also a friend of my tomcat Raffi deceased on October 17. The two had met when Raffi was visiting my friends and Raffi had liked Troll's district. Troll had also partly become his heir, but not for long, alas.
If you want to see more pictures of Troll, striking ones, and of his mate Mimi, do not miss the following slideshow (66 pictures as per today):
Slideshow.
The slideshow will be seen on a separate page, as its width goes slightly beyond the width of this blog and would thus have played havoc with its code. [I for one can presently only watch it with Firefox, not with Internet Explorer. Should you want to see the striking comments to some of the pictures, you'll have to go to Charles' page and move from there.] It contains a large number of pictures taken at that part of the port of Hamburg which is just yards away from my own place, plus many taken further down the river Elbe at places I all recognize. The mood in these pictures is extremely consistent with the mood (and in particular the circumstances of life) of my friends' recent years. And it totally fits our mourning of Troll.Animals
The right attitude towards animals is best illustrated by the marvellous, fabulous, sublime, perfect, enlightening and above all courageous column by Jonathan David Morris of this week: Rest In Peace, Barbaro. By one of the many strange coincidences surrounding Troll's departure (I did not think it adequate to recount them all) this ColumnPerfect as a unique exception was not published on Tuesday, but on that Monday 29. Rest in peace, beloved Troll.Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 01:40 PM GMT+1 [Link]
