The Frail in the Veil

Here we have a photo of a veiled woman. Its ostensible purpose is to provide a visual means of identifying the subject, to which one can only say, “Huh?”. The paradox is almost too much to contemplate. It’s hard to say which aspect of this concept is most stupid.

First candidate: the entire women-as-property ethos. I like to respect the religious beliefs of others, but dammit, making humans cover their faces, like all the rest of the misogynist creed, wherever it is found, is just repugnant. I’m not in favor of women wearing veils unless they want to, and surprisingly few do seem to want to.

So that’s the first stupid thing. The second is: even bothering to take a picture. A principle of equal treatment? People who have no faces are afforded the same opportunity as those with faces: a means to prove or disprove their identity and their very existence. Seriously, would this picture stand up in court as a solid ID? No? Then what is it doing on this passport?

Or maybe it isn’t so stupid. “We have the technology!” was the motto of the 20th century. It won’t be the motto of the 21st century, because humans won’t be around on the planet long enough to look back on the century with nostalgia, or to identify the most characteristic slogan of that century.

So, who needs a whole face? By now we must certainly have the technology to identify an individual from a photo showing one approximate centimeter of flesh. Which many Muslim women do show. This devout lady, however, reveals nothing.

The next stupid thing is, it gives the bludg an excuse to grab more identification markers. “Yes, modest Muslim women are allowed to wear their veils to be photographed,” say the authorities. “This is why we must also have an alternate means of ID, such as fingerprints. And of course we wouldn’t want to discriminate, so that means everybody gets fingerprinted”. Still, this ID method would not capture data from bilateral amputees, so there must be retina scans… and so on, ad nauseum, ad absurdum and ad infinitum.

The fourth thing, and I won’t call it stupid because that would be offensive, but it sure does cause a person to wonder. Doesn’t Islam forbid the making of images? And specifically, images of people? But in order to move about in the modern world, the leaders of the faith apparently are willing to cut the faithful some slack. Well, why not cut them some slack in the matter of veils, infibulation and, you know, that kind of thing?

Top Ten Linguistic Bloopers 7 – 10

Decimated Nauseous Prone Aquiline Somewhat Unique State of the Art Older Laundry List Changed the Course of History, and Could Care Less

(Dedicated to the proposition that words mean something.)

Something has happened to the word older. Let’s back up and start with a parallel example. Visualize a big sandwich, perhaps 4” thick. Now picture a bigger sandwich. How much bigger? Maybe 2” of extra bread and cheese, making it a 6”-thick sandwich. It’s bigger than the big sandwich. Bigger means more than big. It means big plus. However thick that first big sandwich may be, the bigger sandwich is – well, bigger.

For some incomprehensible reason, however, popular usage is tending reverse the meanings of “old” and “older.” People are using “old” to mean a bent-over crone in her 90s, and “older” to mean a silver-haired tennis player in her 50s. This is totally backward, and just about the stupidest vernacular innovation in a long time.

Also, to be old-ER, there has to be something to compare it to. There’s an implied question – Older than what? First, you have to establish the quantity of “old”. If a big sandwich is a 4” sandwich, let’s say that an old person is 70. Okay, now there’s something to compare to. A 4” sandwich is big, and a 6” sandwich is bigg-ER. A person of 70 is old, and person of 90 is old-ER.

Examples from real publications:

“…an older woman in her late 60s…” Older than what? Older than anyone from age 1 to 65, sure. But not older than anyone who is 80 or 90 or 100. It’s stupid.

“Older women buy a lot of shoes.” This makes no sense because if you ask the question, “Older than what?” there’s no answer. It’s stupid.

“HIV/AIDS and the Older Woman” Older than what? Stupid.

“… how older women’s identities are socially constructed…” Older than what? Also stupid.

This quotation is the star:

“Most infertility specialists define an older woman as one who is more than 35 years…”
Remember, “older” means “more old than old.” So by this reasoning, a woman of 34 is old. In fact, anything less than 35 is old, because 35 is old-ER, and that means it’s older than something.

There are times when “older” makes sense. It makes sense to say, “an older man told me,” because he’s older than someone. He’s older than me. It makes sense to title an article about intergenerational romance “Older Women and Younger Men,” because in each couple discussed, the woman is older than someone: specifically, the man she’s dating.

Why must it always be a laundry list? WHY WHY WHY must the word “list” always be preceded by the word “laundry”? It’s like “old abandoned.” Is there some kind of federal law that the word “abandoned” must always, always be accompanied by the word “old”? It’s as if they were conjoined siblings, never to be separated. Same with “laundry” and “list.”

Wretched examples:

“… a makeup artist who boasts a laundry list of celeb clients…” Only it’s not a laundry list – it’s a CLIENT list!

“a serial murderer whose victims form a laundry list of some of the most notorious unsolved cases…” It’s not a freakin’ laundry list, it’s a list of VICTIMS, and has nothing to do with laundry.

Stop it!

We live with a whole collection of myths about how things are. For instance, you’ve heard the phrase “It changed the course of history!” What the hell is the course of history? This implies there is a script where everything that’s going to happen is written down and it can’t be deviated from. Sure, there is – invented by some gnomes who live in caves on Saturn. They write it up in a big book, and boy, do they get ticked off when something comes along to change it!

No, I don’t think so. Reassuring as it might be to think there is a Course of History, there isn’t.

In another sense, everything changes the course of history. Not just big things like the assassination of a president. Every time I breathe, it changes the course of history. You too. It’s the Butterfly Effect, which some call the Trimtab Effect, repeated over and over again billions of times every day. Every time something happens anywhere, it changes the course of history. Which, in that case, doesn’t exist.

“I could care less” is just about the stupidest thing anyone can say, because what they mean by it is “I couldn’t care less.” In other words, they don’t care at all, not one little bit. But – “I could care less” means that they do care, which is of course the opposite of what they think they’re saying.

Devaluation of words, degradation of the language? Most people could care less.

Top Ten Linguistic Bloopers 4-6

Decimated Nauseous Prone Aquiline Somewhat Unique State of the Art Older Laundry List Changed the Course of History, and Could Care Less

(Dedicated to the proposition that words mean something.)

An aquiline nose is a curved nose. Aquila is Latin for eagle, and an aquiline nose is curved like an eagle’s beak. So I Google the words “straight” and “aquiline” in conjunction, and in the first ten results, there are six instances of a “straight, aquiline” nose. How can this be? It can’t. If a thing is curved, it’s not straight! If it’s straight, it’s not curved!

Anne Perry writes some interesting novels, but has a fetish for describing the nose of almost every character in those books as aquiline. In Defend and Betray, there are TEN. Three short aquiline noses, one long aquiline nose. One character has a “curious face with its aquiline nose.” Another has a “nose aquiline and yet broad.” Then there’s a child, “his nose short and already beginning to show an aquiline curve.” Another character has an “aquiline nose that looked almost as if it had been broken,” and one has a “crooked, aquiline nose.” Not content to stop at noses, she says of another character that his “face was aquiline.” Good grief.

“Curved or hooked” is the dictionary definition of aquiline. Another dictionary says “thin, curved, and pointed like an eagle’s beak.” The thinness factor would eliminate Perry’s character whose nose is “aquiline yet broad.” And pity this poor other character, the one whose nose is apparently thin, curved, pointed and crooked, all at the same time.

Memo to Ms. Perry: cool it with the aquiline noses, okay? You’re embarrassing yourself.

The world would be a better place if no-one ever again said somewhat unique. Unique is unlike any other. There’s only one of it. Unique is an all-or-nothing proposition. A thing is either unique or it is not. There is no “somewhat unique,” period.

State of the art, thank Goddess, isn’t heard so often any more, but it sure went around the block enough times to get tired. Probably 15/16ths of the time when people use that phrase, they don’t have the foggiest idea what they mean by it anyway. It morphed into meaning something like the French phrase, le denier cri, the last word, the latest and greatest.

But much, much worse is beyond state of the art, a totally meaningless aggregation of words. Remember the amplifier in Spinal Tap those volume dial went up to 11? Whether you call it 11 or 10, if it’s the highest number on the dial, it’s still the loudest level. “Beyond state of the art” is only in the realm of imagination. The minute a thing is realized, that’s the state of the art, right there. Maybe something was formerly “beyond state of the art,” when it was on the drawing board, but the minute it exists, it automatically becomes the state of the art. Yeah, there are writers who might say “beyond state of the art” in a tongue-in-cheek way, facetiously, as humorous hyperbole, but people are out there using it with a straight face, as if it actually meant something.

Top Ten Linguistic Bloopers 2 and 3

Decimated Nauseous Prone Aquiline Somewhat Unique State of the Art Older Laundry List Changed the Course of History, and Could Care Less

(Dedicated to the proposition that words mean something.)

Here’s what makes me sick (little joke there, very little) – not knowing the difference between two words that have opposite meanings, such as nauseous and nauseated. Don’t say “I feel nauseous” unless you admit to being offensive, loathsome, sickening and vile. “Nauseous” describes the thing that causes nausea, not the person who experiences it. A pile of rotting meat is nauseous, and causes those who encounter it to feel nauseated, unless they are carrion birds or jackals.

prone

People, people people…. prone means face-down. Face-up is “supine.” A hand, for instance. If you turn it palm up, as if to hold soup in it, the hand is supine. Turned the other way, palm down, it is prone. A human body is prone when the front of it is down, in contact with the ground, the bed, or other horizontal surface. Best-selling author Sandra Brown doesn’t know this, as shown in Chill Factor, Long Time Coming, etc. In her Hidden Fire, a prone man is asleep with his hat over his face, snoring. There’s a prone woman, who gives birth to an infant and then stares at the sky – all in a face-down position. The heroine, “hypnotized by the bulge between his thighs,” gazes at the prone body of a man. I’d be hypnotized too, if I saw a man whose package stuck out the back instead of the front.

The most appalling misuse of the word was in a novel whose title is blessedly forgotten. In it, the protagonists scamper about in a cathedral, where the carved likenesses of knights lie prone on their carved stone coffins. Butt-up is a very undignified posture for an honored warrior’s statue, created to adorn his sarcophagus throughout eternity, is it not?

In fact, almost no authors or editors seem to know what “prone” means. Writers of dissertations don’t know, and prestigious academic institutions are in ignorance. An article from Stanford University, about the effect of music on the brain, describes subjects lying prone inside an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) chamber. Okay, I wasn’t there, but – prone? I doubt it.

On one of his very popular radio shows, Alexander Woollcott once chided a local newspaper: “In one of our better New York dailies I read a description of a well-dressed woman lying prone on her back on Fifth Avenue. I’d like to have seen that. Must have been quite a sight……”

The most notorious abuser of “prone” was Stokeley Carmichael, in a wine-lubricated conversation with fellow members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, back in 1964. The civil rights activist was reacting to the recent publication, by Casey Hayden and Mary King, of Position Paper: Women in the Movement. Carmichael cracked, “The position of women in SNCC is prone.” Alluding, of course, to sex. The fact that prone means face-down adds insult to the already-inflammatory comment by implying doggy-style or worse.

In A Hard Rain Fell, David Barber says that in the context of the Mississippi Summer Project, the remark was both humorous and true, since a lot of the Northern white women volunteers took the opportunity to do more than register voters. Carmichael was let off the hook by his contemporaries, including feminists, who said it was just an inside joke, because he was a true supporter of women in the movement. (If he’d said that in so many words, “I support women in the movement,” a double-entendre could be easily heard by anyone whose mind inclines that way.)

Top Ten Linguistic Bloopers 1

First, let’s agree that words do and should mean something. The very act of reading this page is an act of faith in the idea that words mean something, and a testimonial to it. And if we can’t agree that words mean something, what’s the point of ever talking at all? If words mean nothing, maybe we should all just shut the hell up for a change. But that’s a whole different discussion.

Word abuse is a blight that impoverishes our language, IMFO. This top ten collection of abused words has no particular order. They’re all culprits. Here’s how you can tell they are parts of a set. Read this as a headline:

Decimated Nauseous Prone Aquiline Somewhat Unique State of the Art Older Laundry List Changed the Course of History, and Could Care Less

Decimate is a word with an exact meaning, inherent in the word itself – TEN – as in, the Decimal System. It comes from the army of ancient Rome, where discipline in the ranks was maintained by decimation. Here’s how it worked. If the troops misbehaved, the officers would line them up, order them to count off, and summarily execute every tenth man. To decimate is to destroy one-tenth of something. That’s what it means. But….

Here are some examples, from books or news stories, of how the word is misunderstood and abused, and how that contributes to debasing the language.

— In Iraq, the “now-decimated Republican Guard….”

One out of ten is not a bad loss, militarily speaking. I’m sure this writer meant “devastated.”

— This is about a forest where wood was obtained, to rebuild Chicago after the catastrophic fire of 1871. It says the fire “indirectly did more to decimate the forest…” than something or other.

The point is, loss of one-tenth of a forest is not, relatively speaking, a great loss. It could have been far worse, and probably was, only this writer doesn’t realize it, and thinks “decimate” means something close to “destroy.”

— Even the great Jonathan Franzen disappoints, by this phrase in The Corrections: “..bearing the names of decimated tribes…”

I think he means something much closer to “tribes that were wiped out, or almost,” which is a much more tragic situation. A tribe that only loses 10% of its members is a tribe in pretty good shape, actually.

— “Most of mainland Europe was decimated.”

In this incident, many more than ten percent of Europeans died. Because of its inaccuracy, the “decimated” is bad enough, but then there’s the “most,” which is worse. What’s being said here is: most of a continent was one-tenth destroyed. And that makes no sense at all.

— From a suspense novel: “The Manning presidency was decimated….”

How do you kill one-tenth of a presidency?

— “the multimillionaire owner who has decimated the Santa Barbara News-Press…“

It may be possible to kill one-tenth of a newspaper, but I’d like more evidence. Besides, one-tenth isn’t so bad, compared to how many newspapers are… you should excuse the expression… folding.

Ten is a number, like any other number. It has an immutable meaning. To decimate is to kill one-tenth of a group of people. I know everybody else in the world misuses it, but you and I, being the brilliant scholars we are, ought not to.

Nuclear Annihilation Insurance Quotations

Somehow the public doesn’t seem to be able to grasp the significance of the issue.
Herbert Scoville

How can we dispel the notion of some people that anyone will survive a nuclear war?
Dr. Yevgeni Chazov

“Duck and cover” don’t make it.
Anne Alexander

There is no plausible scenario for the use of nuclear weapons in a conflict between the two superpowers that does not carry with it the dangers of catastrophic escalation.
Kurt Gottfried, Henry W. Kendall, John M. Lee in Scientific American

Nuclear winter presents “a real danger of the extinction of humanity.”
Carl Sagan

Given a little carelessness, life on this planet may be made impossible.
Bertrand Russell

Unless we survive, there can be no just society or any other kind.
Roland N. Stromberg

What shall we do without us?
Kenneth Patchen

Had a dream, it was war
and they couldn’t tell me what it was for
but it was something they could lie about
something we could die about, you know.
Roger Hodgson

If they didn’t’ know what they were doing they wouldn’t be in Washington – and they’re not there!
Mort Sahl

I think the leaders of the freeze movement know more about these weapons systems than does the President of the United States.
Herbert Scoville

Whoever gives another the authority to act on his behalf, must accept personal responsibility for the results of that delegated authority.
Leonard Read

There are so many Sorts of Fools, such an infinite Variety of Fools, and so hard it is to know the Worst of the Kind.
Daniel Defoe 1724

I abhor two principles in religion…The first is obedience upon authority without conviction; and the other destroying of them that differ from me for God’s sake.
William Penn

…it is not thus, it is not thus,
it is not thus
that the whole round world is broken.
Kenneth Patchen

Those to whom the survival of mankind is more important than victory in the next election must strive to enlighten the public while there is still time.
Bertrand Russell

This organization has one goal and one goal only – to start the process of dismantling the nuclear weapons in order to protect life.
PRO-Peace statement

President Reagan would not have begun negotiating in Geneva nor discussed arms control with the Russians in 1981 were it not for the antinuclear movement in the US and Europe.
Herbert Scoville

My greatest hope is that my work may have contributed to the prevention of future wars.
Pablo Picasso

RELATED: Nuclear Annihilation Insurance

Nuclear Annihilation Insurance

1985 flyer

Note: this is the text from the 1985 flyer. The quotations are in a separate post.

There is no such thing as nuclear annihilation insurance, and anyone who thinks there could be is tragically deluded. If you have a notion that nuclear war is survivable, if you think there would be anything at the other end worth surviving for, this message is for you.

Oh, you have a shelter? Is your bomb shelter equipped to withstand 30 million degrees F?

At this very moment people are making “contingency plans.” Plans for how to keep your charge account bills coming, through the U.S. Mail which is guaranteed to be up and running with only a single day’s interruption of service. Of course everyone will have an address, due to the marvelous evacuation scheme which promises to get everyone neatly resettled within three business days after global cataclysm.

Sound like a crock? You bet it does. Do you have any conception of how pitifully, laughably inadequate the evacuation plans are? Or any idea how naïve it is to believe there will be anyplace to evacuate to, or any way of getting there? Missiles arrive within thirty minutes of launch. How far can you drive on the San Diego Freeway during the biggest rush hour in history?

Even supposing that evacuation were workable, will you be one of the refugees or one of the hosts? Even if it were possible to survive a “limited” nuclear exchange, would you want to? Will you be among the many thousands of severe burn cases, or among the walking wounded whose job it will be to nurse them?

Nuclear War – If You’ve Seen One, You’ve Seen Them All

It can’t happen, you say? Consider this:

• The nuclear policies of both superpowers rest on the concept of “unacceptable damage” at the very least.

• The purpose of NATO is to initiate nuclear warfare.

• The present administration has ignored or refused six major chances to delay our present course toward apocalypse.

• Some very intelligent people say the chance of accidental nuclear war is quite good. In 1980 it almost happened – because of the malfunction of a 46-cent computer chip.

There won’t be any veterans of WWIII. There won’t be any Time-Life Books series about it. The probability is very high that the beginning of nuclear war would lead inevitably to the end of everything.

Nuclear War – Oh, No, There Goes My Career!

If you’re not horrified by the nearness of total destruction, you haven’t been paying attention. Nuclear warfare is not cost-effective. After it there will be no markets, no goods, no customers, no profits. If you’re concerned about any other issues it behooves you to first be concerned about nuclear war. Of course it has the potential to solve a lot of social problems. No more apartheid No more conflict between pro-choice and pro-life. No choice. No life.

Wasn’t Once Enough?

As Voltaire said after the orgy, when invited to another: No thanks. “Once is philosophy, twice is perversion.” As an anonymous teenager said after trying a popular drug: “Once is curiosity, twice is stupidity.”

The worst thing happening in the world today is the belief people have been brainwashed into, that nuclear war is acceptable, necessary, even inevitable; that the “other side” wants it.

In the street a man is beating his wife. One neighbor turns up his radio and takes care to stay away from the window. Next door someone peeks out through the shade. Another neighbor picks up the phone to call the authorities, realizing too late that the line has been cut. Down the block a man stands on his porch and watches, expressionless. Someone else rushes to intervene, not heeding the risk to himself.

We each have our own way of dealing with the rightly named Unthinkable: the prospect of total devastation of the planet and the death of everything on it. We can throw ourselves into partying and turn our backs on the horror. We can let it into the fringes of consciousness and pay it with nightmares. We can kid ourselves into complacency, blind faith in the leaders who will surely take care of us and bring about a “victory” for our side. We can stare it in the face, numb as rabbits paralyzed by oncoming headlights. We can try to stop it, using any and all means at our disposal no matter how futile or hopeless the task may seem.

Give Peace a Chance

A good place to start would be a weapons freeze: Stop all testing, production, and deployment of bombs, warheads, and delivery vehicles of all types. When you consider that enough nuclear warheads already exist to blow up the world about 70 times over, freeze is not such an unreasonable proposition. Better yet, and the only acceptable course if life on earth is to continue – TOTAL MULTILATERAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT. Quite simply, take the weapons down. Dismantle them. We figured out how to put them together, surely we can figure out how to take them apart.

Making a Difference

There is no such thing as Nuclear Annihilation Insurance. Not that we can buy with money. But there are other things we can do. Virtually every profession, religion, and ethnic group has a peace group within. Examples of these specialized groups include architects, atomic scientists, atomic bomb survivors, computer experts, lawyers, Asian Americans, Constitutionalists, mothers, gays, professors, librarians, doctors, teachers, and psychologists. In Los Angeles alone there are dozens of groups working for peace. If your town has more than fifty people in it, chances are there’s a peace group.

We need to find ways to let the politicians and general on both “sides” know they do not have our permission or approval in their insane pursuit of Armageddon. We can view Threads or The Day After to get a real feel for what it is we’re dealing with here. We can educate ourselves by reading some of the many informative books on the nuclear threat and the peace alternative.

Some people create art which expresses their anti-nuclear convictions. Some alter billboards and paint slogans on walls. Thousands of people will interrupt their lives to go on a nearly year-long walk to Washington in 1986, to make the elected officials and the rest of the country and the world aware of the strength of their feelings. Thousands are arrested every year in acts of civil disobedience directed against nuclear warfare preparations. Some have gone so far as to damage missile silos and other military property in protest. Some refuse to hand over part or all of the taxes the government demands to buy our destruction. Did you know the seemingly insignificant federal excise tax on your phone bill is specifically earmarked for military use? If we continue to pay now, we will surely pay later.

There are innumerable ways to make a difference, and all of them worth trying. No idea is too wild when compared to the alternative – the end of life on this planet. One prominent scientist proposed an exchange between the superpowers of millions of children – a war prevention plan which has historical precedent.

Wake Up Today: The Future Can Still Happen

The first and most important step toward turning this mess around can happen in only one place: the mind. Your mind. Believe that reversal is possible and that insanity can be ended. Believe that the people, the citizens, of other nations don’t want nuclear warfare any more than we do. Believe that people can say no. We can say no. And that’s the only insurance we’ve got.

P. Robinson 1985

RELATED: Nuclear Annihilation Insurance Quotations

E-graffiti

I know, I know, thousands of these things fly around the webwaves. But these are my favorites of the ones I’ve seen.

This last one is a Mad Magazine Poster

Animal Hoarding – What the Hell is That?

In which the author expresses disgust at the arrest of Ron Mason.

To “hoard” is to keep to oneself either something that other people do want – like canned meat – or something that other people don’t want – like a garage full of used plastic cups.

A hoard is a hidden supply or fund that is stored up. In wartime, hoarding is seen as very anti-social. Under military rule, people are expected to not stockpile goods for their own use, or participate in the black market, or abuse the rationing system. But in the case of wartime hoarding, we’re talking about a commodity that the government says it wants to share fairly with all the citizens (and actually wants for its soldiers and its war machine.) Cans of beans, sides of beef, gold coins, or silk stockings – you’ll notice that these are all considered desirable items. To be engaged in this type of hoarding, a person would have to hang onto a supply of something that other people want.

Well, nobody wants these damn cats. That’s the problem. These cats were thrown away by humans. They’re either abandoned domestic pets, or feral cats whose parents or grandparents were abandoned domestic pets. It would be a real good idea for any agency that claims to care about the welfare of animals, to concentrate their efforts on the people who dump their cats.

And then there’s the kind of hoarding that applies to stuff people don’t want, items that “don’t seem reasonable,” according to one of the talking heads in this video. Keeping stuff that either is, or appears to be, useless. And usefulness is in the eye of the beholder. My grandpa had a room full of little bits and pieces of wire and transistors and knobs and so on, that seemed useless to most onlookers. But he could fix your radio or TV.

Another kind of hoarding applies to stuff that people didn’t used to want, but now they do want it, and the former hoarders turn out to be astute business people. When people hoard baseball cards or comic books and then make some money off the items, we call them entrepreneurs. If they hoard paintings, we call them collectors, and shower them with praise.

Here’s a description of the pathology of the animal hoarder: “Because of their sheer numbers, these animals usually aren’t cared for properly. Many become so ill that they die or have to be euthanized.” Does this sound familiar? It sounds like an official animal shelter, to me. The point here is, by any definition you can formulate, animal shelters hoard animals. And the level of care in official shelters is not necessarily as good as what the free-lancers provide.

Admonishing any animal hoarders who happen to read their webpage, the Mayo Clinic says the critters “deserve to live healthy and happy lives, and that’s not possible if you can’t provide them with proper nutrition, sanitation and veterinary care.” So according to the medical establishment, what you’re supposed to do with the animals is hand them over to a government agency that can’t provide them with proper nutrition, sanitation, veterinary care or, in some cases, as we’ve recently seen, can’t even provide our little four-legged friends with shade to keep the sun off them.

This quote is even more ludicrous: “A hoarder fails to provide the animals with adequate food, water, sanitation, and veterinary care, and … is in denial about this inability to provide adequate care.”

You want to know who’s in denial? The police who arrest Ron Mason for providing the amenities to the cats, and then charge him with being a hoarder, which is by definition someone who fails to provide the amenities. Denial is when bureaucrats think their shelters provide better care than concerned individuals with limited means and loving hearts. Denial is believing that adequate care is something only the State is capable to provide. Denial is pretending that the killing of healthy animals, because official facilities are overcrowded, constitutes “adequate care.”

Supposedly, the societal problem here is that too many cats are running around the neighborhood. So this guy gives them a place to hang out, where they won’t annoy the neighbors. In which case, keeping them to himself is not a bad thing. It is, in fact, a very good and beneficial thing. He ought to be helped, encouraged and subsidized, not prosecuted. One of the officials in the video explains why it’s wrong for Mason to give houseroom to these animals – because “they get everything they need here.” Exactly! So they’re not out bothering the neighbors! What is the freakin’ problem?

To make compassion for animals into a crime is outrageous. They’re talking about “the recidivism rate is 100%.” All that means is, people who are willing to feed hungry cats will probably always be willing to feed hungry cats, no matter how drastically they are punished by the State. They’re making it sound like the guy is a pedophile or something.

To make compassion for animals into a disease is outrageous. This alleged mental health expert says, “They get a skewed perspective.” News flash: the people who think euthanization is preferable to living with Ron Mason are the ones with the skewed perspective. Maybe somebody should ask the cats for their opinion on the subject. The officials are talking about sentencing Mason to ongoing mental health treatment and medication. They want to “help this person be okay” by assigning him a minder who come in daily. This is an unbelievably stupid use of resources. The whole implication that something is wrong with Ron Mason is unbelievably stupid. This is Cold War era Soviet Russia bullshit. Any time a citizen does something the government doesn’t like, just label that citizen mentally ill. We’re about one step away from compulsory lobotomization.

Ron Mason doesn’t create these animals. He doesn’t manufacture them or give birth to them. On the contrary, he’s tried to stop more of them from being born, by having them neutered. Even if he wasn’t able to have all the cats operated on, there’s still more of them neutered than there would have been if he’d never taken responsibility for any of them. What’s the freakin’ problem?

The spokesperson for the authorities explains that hoarding is having a whole bunch of something. By this definition, you know who’s hoarding? Orphanages hoard children. Or at least, they used to. Maybe orphanages have disappeared, like mental institutions, which used to hoard mentally ill people, until the state closed them and let all the mentally ill people out on the street, where they are so much better off.

The California penal system hoards prisoners. They got a whole bunch of prisoners, and they want to add to the number by locking up some poor targeted civilian who takes care of cats. Who else is hoarding? The vastly overpaid and incompetent jokers who run Animal Services, that’s who. They hoard millions of tax dollars and produce nothing – certainly not services – for anybody, animal or human.

Related:

Cats, Ron Mason, and Human Health

Video of some people who have gone way overboard in response to the cats next door

and the whole story behind what you saw there

The picture on this page is by brownpau via this Creative Commons license

Cats, Ron Mason, and Human Health

Check out this video of a guy in LA being busted for having too many cats.

In the police briefing before the raid, they make this big fuss about triple gloves, and bleach footbaths, and how there’s urine and feces all over the property. Uh-huh, totally unlike the areas where their own dogs of war are housed, trained, and exercised. I’d love to hear from anybody who can verify that there are bleach footbaths in the LAPD’s K-9 facilities.

And the animals step in their own waste, the briefing officer notes, and track the germs around. I’m not crazy about that aspect of pet ownership. When a cat jumps out of the litterbox and then gets comfy on my pillow, I’m not happy. But it’s the same scenario millions of pet owners cope with in their lives. They just wash the pillowcase, or not, depending on personal taste.

You know what I worry about? People. I don’t like it when people use the toilet and neglect to wash their hands. I don’t like it when doctors go from one patient to the next without washing, and spread infection all over the hospital. I don’t it when somebody strolls over to the stove and tastes the spaghetti sauce and puts the spoon back in the pot. I don’t like it when people send their flu-sick kids to daycare. Though I certainly understand it.

The point is, more people get health problems from other people’s negligent spreading of bacteria, and polluted air and water, and from their own bad habits, than they do from animal germs. They get more health problems from eating animals than they do from taking care of animals. That’s not to say animal germs are desirable. Only that they play a relatively small part in the overall human health picture.

One uniform here talks about how having those cats is “not a sanitary way to live.” True, it’s less sanitary than maintaining a cat-free home. But – news flash – there is no sanitary way to live. It’s a shame, and we all do the best we can with it, but as long as we’re here on Planet Earth, our existence isn’t sanitary.

Threat to human health – you know what’s a threat to human health? The police. How many times do they descend like an invading army on non-violent citizens? How often do they carry out busts at the wrong address and kill innocent people? There aren’t enough electrons in this computer to cover the subject of what a threat to human health the cops are.

Excrement is a threat? Yes, it is. And the most copious source of excrement in this situation is the massive amount of bullshit spewed out from the mouths of these officials.

Related:

Animal Hoarding – What the Hell is That?

video of some people who have gone way overboard in response to the cats next door

and the whole story behind what you saw there

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