Benji vs. “The Wolf”

From Benji the Hunted, a film that Siskel and Ebert fought over.

It’s sad what happens to that obvious wolf dummy in the end…

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I discovered the meaning to life this evening

I’ve heard this song before, but I never actually listened to it as I did this evening.

Source.

The meaning is in the last part of the song:

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive but you’ll never know

I’ll probably never actually know my meaning.

But I’m sure that my meaning is in the seeds I’m throwing.

I’m throwing them with every word I write in the vain hope that someone will read them.

I’m throwing them whenever someone come to me wanting advice or a chance to speak in confidence.

I am not full of myself enough to believe that I’m changing the world.

But I know that what I write is important to some people. ‘

What I say may have made a difference in someone’s life.

So I’ll casts my seeds.

Maybe one will sprout.

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History of the Devil– Well worth watching!

It is my Halloween ritual to post this documentary:

Source.

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The High Priestesses of Salukidom defame a Lollard

Photo by Jess Ruffner.

Most of the dog fancy exists in a kind of quasi-religious system in which different people become high priests  and priestesses and certain bromides and mythology become established dogma.

Dog culture is less concerned with evidence and objectivity than it is about conformity and obedience.

Those who question either the high priests or the dogma are either subjected to a severe inquisition or excommunicated.

In the case of Salukis, they print the heretic’s e-mail in one of their publications.

It is really nothing more than a petty vendetta. Someone who believes got into an internet war with a particularly ruthless (and well-informed and somewhat blunt) skeptic. The believer contacted another believer, and so they hatched a diabolical scheme to fix her wagon.

Print some quotes in our magazine.

And her e-mail.

Muhahahahahahahaha! Muhahahahahaha! Muhahaha! ( Magica De Spell style)

This is how the high church deals with heretics.

For Lollards soon turn into Luthers.

And the last thing these people want is some kind of Reformation in which things like “blood purity for blood purity’s sake” and the taboos against a certain striped coat pattern might be openly questioned using empirical methods.

Like all defenders of the faith, these high priestesses must defend the dogma.

But this is just pathetic.

All Jess is guilty of is asking these to questions:

“Why do we believe this? What is the evidence?”

And when they tried to answer using the dogma, the evidence was wanting in so many ways.

That’s what happens.

That’s the game that has been played ever since the registries were closed and the Great Schisms between fanciers led to the creation of a many Balkanized gene pools from what were once dynamic bloodlines that contained a wealth of genetic diversity.

But the values inherent in that game are being lost. Their currency doesn’t set will with a greater number of people every year. The institutions, the clergy, and the dogma no longer sound legitimate.

And at that level, change is coming.

It comes bit by bit.

Then there’s a great leap.

Then a setback.

And back to bit by bit.

But sooner or later, things will change.

These little games are but an amusing sign that these people are desperate.

Desperate for times in which what they said was accepted as the absolute truth.

For this is the system whose values they accepted and mature in. It is within that paradigm that their views of what is successful and what is correct are fundamentally shaped.

But what happens when that paradigm is fundamentally shaken?

The answer: Resort to cheap insults.

Maybe it will go away.

But it doesn’t change that the dogmas inherent in the various dog cultures are being openly questioned on so many levels.

New ideas are seeping into the belief systems. The internet allows all of us access to different perspectives on these issues.

We don’t have to believe because that’s the only thing out there.

We can question. We can innovate.

And that bugs the hell out of these people.

Here’s to more general Lollardy in the dog world!

John Wycliffe speaking to his fellow Lollards. Good thing they weren't in Salukis or their e-mail addresses would be published!

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My sentiments exactly

LOL

From the Rally to Restore Sanity

I guess it failed.

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Russian bears raid cemeteries

Russia has experienced a scorching hot summer that included a prolonged drought.

Russian brown bears are mostly vegetarian, but most of their normal food supply has disappeared.

So they have taken to raiding cemeteries in much the same way wolves raided them in the Middle Ages.

In the Old West, wolves were notorious for digging up graves and eating the  bodies.

It has been suggested that wolves learned to hunt people throw grave robbing, so let’s hope that Russian brown bears don’t learn this habit.

If they do, Vladimir Putin will have to shoot them or do Judo on them.

Or call Sarah Palin up to shoot them from an airplane.

 

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DIY Tail Docking?

I post this video to stimulate discussion:

Source.

I’m not going to say very much. Please leave your thoughts in the comments section.

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Salukis chasing a gazelle in Saudi Arabia

Source.

This is about like fox chasing.

I can’t figure out which species of gazelle this is. It’s either a Dorcas or a Mountain gazelle.

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Cool Change

Not a bad music video for this song:

Source.

I get this sentiment at times.

My Myers-Briggs Personality Type is INTJ.

However, I have taken it a few times from different sites and have received an INTP.

I would call myself an INTJ– but with that caveat in mind.

My I tends to be very strong.

***

I should mention the Little River Band is from Australia (hence the albatross in the lyrics), not Little River, South Carolina.

 

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Irish lycanthropy legend

Gerald of Wales included this legend in his Topographia Hibernica :

In Ireland in 1182, a priest travelling from Ulster into Meath, and having to pass the night in a wood, was sitting by a fire which he had made, when a wolf accosted him in human speech.

He was, he said, a man of Ossory, on whose race lay an ancient curse, whereby every seven years a man and a woman were changed into wolves; at the end of seven years they recovered their proper form, and two others suffered a like transformation. He and his wife were the present victims of the curse; his wife was at the point of death, and he prayed the priest to come and give her the viaticum [Last Eucharist] .

After some hesitation the priest complied; and next morning the wolf put him in the right road, and took leave of him with words of gratitude. The priest doubted whether he had not done wrong, and consulted many theologians on the point. In the end he went to the Pope; the result is not stated.

(Another version of the story)

***

One wonders if this legend’s origins might lie in the pre-Christian Era of Ireland, where most of island was heavily forested and the deer and the wolf were common.

I wonder if this story could have been passed down from an original story in which a people with the wolf’s prowess at hunting deer was celebrated, and then in the Christian Era, it was twisted in a kind of  “reverse syncretism” into a curse.

Wolves have always been potent symbolic animals.

It really doesn’t matter where or how the symbols get used.

The wolf gets mixed into our culture.

That’s why it is so hard to be objective about the wolf.

The creature is so distorted through out cultural lenses that they become quite subject.

One culture sees them as a shaman.

Another sees them as evil incarnate.

And this is still a biological animal with its own instincts, intellect, drives, and emotions.

 

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