Take the chains off the dogs!

Left: Dogs Deserve Better founder Tamira Thayne is chained to a dog house for her second day in a row in Piazzo Bergamo in downtown Greenville, SC, as she demonstrates alongside another group, Pawsitive Effects, an organization that helps build fences for pets. She is demonstrating in the annual "Chain-Off"--which brings crucial attention to the danger of chaining dogs. Photo by Heidi Heilbrunn of the Greenville News.

Some of the participating folks are my customers, so I am very proud and pleased to report this demonstration! The event itself is seven years old, but this weekend marked the first year it has been held in Greenville.

Dog activists in Greenville send message about chaining dogs outside

By Paul Alongi • Staff Writer • July 13, 2009
Greenville News

Animal-rights advocates shed their chains Sunday after spending two straight days tethered to doghouses in one of downtown Greenville's most visible venues.

Their message was simple: “Don't chain your dog,” said Tamira Thayne, founder of Tipton, Pa.-based Dogs Deserve Better.

Advocates said that chaining dogs is legal in many areas but takes away their ability to run away, making them more likely to bite people.

At least two Upstate child deaths have been blamed on chained dogs since 2003.

Advocates said children are particularly at risk because they often don't recognize dogs' warning signs.

“When you realize you are no longer able to flee the scene, you're just always amped up for the fight,” Mikael Hardy said. “And dogs don't distinguish between a cat, a squirrel and a 2-year-old toddler.”

Being chained also is painful for the dog.

Some people buy a puppy, chain it and as it grows, the collar becomes embedded in its neck.

One alternative to chaining is to keep dogs inside fences, Hardy said.

Her Greenville-based group, Pawsitive Effects, helps build 600-square-foot fenced enclosures for dog owners who can't afford them, she said.

About 120 people chained themselves in demonstrations throughout the country, but the main Dogs Deserve Better event was in Greenville, Thayne said.

Six demonstrators kept themselves chained for about 28 hours, starting Saturday morning and ending Sunday afternoon, Thayne said.

They spent their days at Piazza Bergamo to draw attention to their cause and slept under a barn overhang at a local farm, Thayne said.

Several others tethered themselves part of the time, she said.

It takes a dog lover to give up so much time and comfort, and Hardy fits the profile.

She has nine dogs, all rescued animals, in addition to two children and a husband.

There is plenty of room for all on their three-acre spread, she said.

Of the nine dogs, she said, three are pit bulls and two of those, Martha Goldfinch (a male) and Seymore (who is blind) had been chained.

When she put Martha on a leash to take him for a walk, he went in a circle.

She finally had to put him on a treadmill so he would walk forward.

Even for dog lovers, being chained made for a grueling, exhausting weekend.

When Thayne finally threw off her chain, she said she had “the best shower of the year.”

Unfortunately, chained dogs are extremely common here in the south. Admittedly, it's better than being charged by a large, angry rottweiler, which happened to me while on an evening walk, around 1991. But I later learned the dog that charged me was usually chained up. (My defense: I ran right into the street, a busy thoroughfare, and took my chances; the dog actually attempted to cross the street after me but became confused by the heavy traffic and retreated. But the dog was confused, not scared and not chastened, by any means. One of the most unnerving, frightening experiences I have ever had.) Neighbors agreed the dog seemed perpetually angry and ill-tempered, and predictably, wore one of those spiky collars, which made him appear even scarier. But I now realize that even for a rottweiler, the dog had been trained to be mean and "amped up" (see above) for a fight by being chained all the time.

Once you chain such a dog, it becomes dangerous to UNchain them, as I am here (but almost wasn't!) to attest...

My other dog-charging story involves a large unchained pit bull that started charging toward me at several hundred yards... I nearly died on the spot. Nowhere to run, deer in the headlights, I just stood there. I said my Hail Marys and prepared to meet my maker, hoping it wasn't too painful.

Well, the dog turned out to be a VERY LARGE pit bull PUPPY, delightedly galumphing toward me in welcome, tail wagging.... happy to make my acquaintance. He jumped on me, ecstatically happy and licking me with puppy-love. I nearly wet myself as I petted him, weak with relief, burbling insanely "...what a good doggie, what a good doggie...."...Oh dear God. Whew.

As the expression goes, good fences make good neighbors, and I would add, good fences also make good dog owners!

Who cruised David Brooks?

This thread is for Bryce, and other gays here in South Carolina, who are giggling with glee today.

Columnist/author David Brooks said on MSNBC:

You know, all three of us spend a lot of time covering politicians and I don’t know about you guys, but in my view, they’re all emotional freaks of one sort or another. They’re guaranteed to invade your personal space, touch you. I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time. I was like, ehh, get me out of here.

Italics mine.

Wonder who it was, she coughed.

Asked specifically who it was, Brooks hedged, of course:

I’m not telling you, I’m not telling you. But so, a lot of them spend so much time needing people’s love and yet they are shooting upwards their whole life, they’re not that great in normal human relationships. And so, they’re like freaks, they don’t know how to, they’re lonely. They reach out. I’ve spoken to a lot of young women who are Senate staffers and they’ll have these middle age guys who are sort of in the middle of a mid-life crisis. Emotionally needy, they don’t know how to do it and sort of like these St. Bernards drooling everywhere. And you find a lot of this happens in mid-life and among very powerful people who are extremely lonely.

Hmm. Interesting.

Who do you suppose it was?

(cough)

Michael Jackson inspires Blogdonia

In lieu of a proper obituary for Michael Jackson (surely you've read/viewed enough of them by now), I have collected some of the Best of Blogdonia, holding forth on the King of Pop.

Just when you think everything has already been said, someone adds something especially thoughtful; Michael Jackson's colorful life inspires still another writer or activist to go off in a different direction.

RIP, Michael.

~*~

Open Thread: Remembering Michael Jackson at Racialicious, has some excellent comments and trackbacks.

By way of Isabel the Spy, I found Would Michael Jackson have been such a sensation if he couldn't dance?:

Michael Jackson did dance, he could hold an audience's attention by just dancing and not singing. He didn't have to stoop to pseudo sexual acts for shock appeal. And he made a lot of men, black, white, brown and yellow, want to dance just like him. Perhaps his dancing more than his music was what truly made him an international star.

TigerBeatdown comments on Michael Jackson, Celebrity, Empathy, and the Culture of Silence. Read the comments, too, which include one by your humble narrator.

Ballardian weighs in on Michael Jackson's Facelift from the purely surgical standpoint:

Scarring was hypertrophic at the points where tension was greatest: that is, in the temple and the region behind the ear, but fortunately these were covered by the King of Pop’s hair. The small fine sutures which were not responsible for tension were removed at 4 days, and the strong sutures removed at the tenth day. The patient was then allowed to have a shampoo to remove the blood from his hair. All scarlines are expected to fade, and by the end of three weeks the patient was back in social circulation.

And for even more cold, hard reality, you can always count on Socialist Unity:

The sheer extent of [Jackson's] fame meant that for him anything even approaching normality was as much a fantasy as standing on stage performing and being worshipped by tens of thousands of people was for his millions of fans. Unable to deal with the distorting and cloying reality of the pressure that was placed on him to be more than human, Michael Jackson did his utmost to escape into an imaginary world of childlike innocence and fairytale. His Neverland Ranch was symptomatic of a man who’d rejected a world in which he was surrounded by the demands of fans, managers, promoters, recording executives, and a legion of sycophants, for one in which he was surrounded by children and the innocence they represent.

Stories began to emerge of his relationship with a monkey, of him sleeping in an oxygen tent, and then later of his inappropriate relations with some of the children he took to taking with him around the world, which progressed into charges being brought against him of sexual molestation.

The physical manifestations of Michael Jackson’s personal collapse were all too obvious in the plastic surgery which turned him into a living, breathing monument to self loathing and mutilation. Increasingly, whenever he appeared in public, it was like looking at a man slowly turning himself into one of the characters from his Thriller video, perhaps in a conscious attempt to hide from a world grown ever more intrusive and unsympathetic.

Ultimately, the ridicule which dogged Michael Jackson while he was alive, ridicule driven by an unforgiving media and international press, was in inverse proportion to the deluge of tributes and fawning idolatry that has dominated the coverage of his death.

From Confessions of a Cryokid, here is A letter to Prince Michael, Paris, and "Blanket" Jackson:

By now you have probably heard all the major media outlets advertising that your dad is not your biological father, and that your mom is not your biological mother. I can only imagine how hard this must be, just days after your dad tragically died.

I am so sorry that you had to find out the truth this way, it's a cruel thing to do to a child - hide the truth about your identity and let strangers reveal it maliciously to you. Parents sometimes make these decisions (to keep a secret) thinking they are protecting their children. However, usually it backfires. Unfortunately, because of who your daddy was, this backfire has been made public and the entire world is watching you. It's not fair, but make the best out of a bad situation.

But don't feel alone. There are thousands (maybe millions) of kids out there just like you - conceived artificially and denied the right to EVER know who their biological parents are. You three can change this!! Stories are flying around that your dad's dermatologist is your biological father. If this is true, you deserve to know, to know him - as your father. Ask questions, demand answers! Not only can you find answers for yourself, you can help thousands of other kids and adults out there who were conceived the same way!

Your daddy will always be your daddy, nobody can take that away - and it will take time to mourn his passing. But you also have a biological father out there, and you carry half his genes. His is part of you - he even looks like you! While nothing can mask the loss of your daddy, I hope that your biological father will step up and give you guidance and love, and support through this rough time and as you grow up. You deserve that as children and as human beings.

You also deserve to know your biological mother, and I hope for your sake that she stands up and acknowledges herself to you and provides love and support. A child needs both a mom and a dad, and to have only one and lose him is tragic but to be denied the ability to know both biological parents is horrific.

If you ever come across this, in a few weeks, a few months, even a few years - please know that you're not alone and that there are many others out there pleading for these same rights...and that one day we will prevail.

Bull 1 - Humans 0

Comic by Karl Bakla (NSFW)




The bull got somebody today.

(Feminist Question of the Day: Do women ever engage in this foolishness, or is it primarily a dude thing?)

From the London Telegraph:

Man gored to death in Pamplona bull run
By Fiona Govan in Madrid
Published: 2:56PM BST 10 Jul 2009

Daniel Jimeno Romero, a 27-year-old from Madrid, was gored to death during the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona and nine others were injured in what became the bloodiest run in decades.

Mr Romero died after a bull's horn pierced his neck and lungs during the half mile sprint through the cobbled streets of the northern Spanish town. He is the first man to be gored to death during the run for 14 years.

He was brought down by a 1,130 lb (515 KG) brown beast named Capuchino which became disorientated and aggressive after separating from the pack of bulls.

Each morning at 8 o'clock during the eight-day fiesta six fighting bulls are released to stampede through the winding streets to the bullring.

Fuelled by alcohol during what has become one of Europe's biggest street parties, participants test their bravado and sprint alongside the bulls while attempting to dodge their horns.

Friday's run, the fourth of this year's San Fermin festival was described as the bloodiest in decades and raised the death toll to 15 since record-keeping began in 1911.

Mr Romero was treated at the local hospital but surgeons were unable to save him and he was pronounced dead at 8.45 am.

"He suffered mortal injuries, so there was nothing we could do to save his life," said Esther Vila, the surgeon who operated on him."He had lost a great deal of blood."

Pamplona´s mayor Yolanda Barcina expressed her devastation at the death. "In 11 years as mayoress, nothing like this has ever happened before," she said.

Video footage showed one man being flipped into the air by the bull who then repeatedly charged him as he lay curled on the ground.

Others attempted to leap over wooden barriers that line the route to escape the lethal horns of the bull who charged anyone in his path. But at least three other people were gored by the animal raised on the Jandilla ranch, which has a reputation for breeding aggressive bulls that perform well in the ring.

Another six people were being treated for injuries, said a spokesman at the Virgen del Camino hospital in Pamplona.

Among them was a 61-year-old American man who was said to be in a serious condition in intensive care having suffered head injuries.

Another American man in his sixties suffered a fractured elbow and a 20 year-old British man was reportedly being treated for minor injuries.

An Australian, an American, a Scottish man and a Swiss national were injured in other runs this week.

The last fatality occurred in 2003, when local man Fermin Etxberri, 63, was trampled to death. Friday's death was the first fatal goring since that of American Matthew Tassio in 1995.

Tens of thousands travel to Pamplona each July, where dressed in white clothes and red neckerchiefs they participate in the fiesta made famous by Ernest Hemingway in his novel, The Sun Also Rises.

I guess it's supposed to be fun, but for sheer daredevil-kicks, I prefer NASCAR, which doesn't require using animals.

Old school Friday: I don't need no cure

Daisy reaches waaaaay back into her already-rusty memory banks this week, for some Old School music.

Enjoy!

~*~

Express - BT Express



~*~

The Love I Lost - Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes



~*~

Great "time capsule" video for this one (from 1976), giving you some pretty good visuals from the US-Bicentennial celebration of that year. Lots of forgotten celebrities and commercials also represented!

This is in honor of Michael Jackson's will, leaving his children to Diana Ross in the event his mother can't take them... Also, I belatedly realized that I did not include her in my Diva Round-up last month, and Van would be so upset with me for that...

Love Hangover - Diana Ross



I don't need no cure/I don't need no cure...