At the California State Fair this week, a cow was shot and killed. Apparently the pregnant heifer got out of its enclosure and started running loose on the grounds. This was happening before the fair even opened for the day.
So, a UC Davis Vet decided that this was one anti-social cow and gave orders to execute it.
Now I’ve seen cows ridden, roped, wrestled, and BBQ’d and I’ve never seen one that was too happy with people. What I want to know is where was this cow’s owner, where was a cowboy when one was needed, didn’t anyone have a horse and a rope?
John Wayne could have handled the situation. Maybe the Vet was low on beef. Sacramento has been known as a “Cow Town” for a long time, maybe it’s time to find a new insult.
OK, enough Mr. Nice guy, the softer side of me in the last post.
I’m wondering about politics today and the Governor’s race. An interesting thing is happening. Meg Whitman has really nasty attack ads all over the airwaves directed at Jerry Brown. Jerry Brown on the other hand isn’t hitting back yet. Some unions have placed ads, but Mr. Brown’s campaign is taking the strategy of rope-a-dope (ala Ali v. Frazier).
I guess I am not sure why Brown isn’t striking back at Meg Whitman’s record and whatever is negative in that, or maybe he won’t be walking down the negative road. Problem is negative works in campaigns. Since we really don’t know these people, we need to be told their flaws by their opponents because the candidates are not going to admit them or they’re going to varnish over them to the extent that a weakness appears to be a strength.
I need Jerry Brown’s campaign to come forward and tell me what is wrong with Meg Whitman because Meg is mum on the topic. If there’s nothing wrong with her except that she has trouble saying the word “it”, she’s going to get my vote because I can certainly see from her ads that there are lots of things wrong with Jerry Brown (as vague as all the negative allegations are in a 15 second spot).
Anyway, enough crankiness for today. Come on Jerry, get off the ropes and throw a few punches.
So I am deleting my post about muslims because after venting my outrage, I realize that muslims too are Children of God, and even Jesus on the Cross forgave those who “knew not what they do”. So, I am working on it…but I am vigilant!
Check this link I got via Twitter
Since everyone else is so wonderfully cranky today, I can take the day off!
I highly recommend that you click on these links and read these two really excellent cranky blog posts on
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I love this guy’s idea. For one thing, there’s only room for one person, that’ means me, not even me-myself-and, I could fit in there. Here is a link to Jay Shafer’s home page in case you want more information about his Tumbleweed homes
Gotta learn more about this idea!!!
Laundry finished, apartment scrubbed, bed remade, it was time for my walk. It was a relatively short walk but interesting all the same. First, as I came across the cathedral opposite Sutter’s Fort I noticed that St. Francis of Assisi standing protectively over his monolithic church has bees buzzing around his head and appearing to be waiting for air traffic control to clear them for landing inside the old saint’s head. I wondered at the significance of St. Francis having bees in his bonnet and honey on his insides.
A short block later I noticed a young lady and an elderly man standing above a drain in the street. On the street were a bicycle laid on its side and a cardboard box, plus a small steel cage. The young lady looked a bit distraught so I spit on my hankie rubbed a bit of shine into my armor and walked dashingly across the street.
Apparently – as related by the older man – each year the ducks having babies retreat from the pond at Sutter’s Fort because there is a protected hawk there who preys on the babies. So each year the mother ducks wander along the street in search of safe harbor and some of their ducklings invariably fall into the grates of the street drains. I peered into the drain and saw in the bottom a tiny, adorable-yet-cranky, multi-colored duckling scurrying to and fro and leaping up the sides of the drain. It was an admirable effort but to no avail, the poor duck was stuck.
So, the knight that I am come forth and I bravely did what they apparently were unable or unwilling to do which was to reach around through the opening into the pit. It took a bit of patience to wait until the duckling came within reach because he hissed (silent at his tender age) and my fingers appearing in the dusty semi-darkness. Finally he came to the side I could reach and I nimbly scooped him up and out of its pit of despair.
I handed it to the young lady who thanked me and I nobly bowed and pledged my undying fealty (no, I didn’t). She then boxed the ducky and went to try to reunite it with its mother who had by then taken the brood underneath a nearby house. At that point in the adventure I ran clean out of chivalry and wished her and the old man the best of luck.
I wonder if PETA realizes what a noble soul lives in Midtown. If they are informed, I certainly haven’t been contacted. I also wonder at the protection of the hawk in opposition to protecting the ducks. I have never seen hawk-a-l’orange in any menu anywhere.
So I’m sitting at the Laundromat while my laundry goes round and round and round. It’s early Saturday morning – relatively- and I’ve not had any coffee so bear with me while this post takes shape.
I’ve been percolating on the state of the nation and how we are ever going to begin to rebuild an economy that’s based on anything resembling what got us here, industrial.
The problem is that so many of our jobs these days are simply there to provide services to people with money. So now that nobody has much money left, there’s not much to pay for services, so people with a Mercedes are here at the Laundromat doing their own laundry rather than pay for it to be done while they run off somewhere to eat in a restaurant or shop.
The trickle down effect of that is interesting because we’ve managed to automate industries that used to employ people but which we still need, like agriculture. I think I blogged about this before, but it’s worth describing again. An acquaintance of mine who is a farmer told me how fertilizer is spread on tomato fields. It seems that there is a machine that uses GPS to calculate the topography of the field and the way that the water flow will affect the eventual spread of the fertilizes as the land is irrigated and how this will move the fertilizer around. So the machine spreads the fertilizer to maximize its effectiveness and then when it’s done, it automatically charges the farmer’s account upon leaving the field for the fertilizer it has spread around. Smart, brilliant, all of that, but there’s practically no labor involved. It’s amazing but what about the people who need to make money to buy the food to feed themselves and their families? The only people making money are the fertilizer company, the software people, and the computer hardware people, and the farmer. No farm hands are needed for that part. And one only has to watch the rest of the farming industry to see how few people are needed these days to grow the food.
Of course I am telling you something you already know, that low level hard labor jobs are and have been disappearing. Labor is expensive, people are frail, lawyers and unions dominate the field of labor making it appealing to eliminate them both.
So, then what can we do to make it more appealing for industry to offer employment to people rather than to machines? I think the answer is tort reform. We need to limit how much people can sue for, what they can sue for, and what lawyers can earn from lawsuits. We need it before the lawyers sink the country under endless laws, regulations, restrictions, and the like all coming out of their endless lawsuits, people are at risk of becoming unnecessary to most industries and industries are being driven to find ways to save the money that people cost them. We need a solution and tort reform is one piece of the puzzle.
