Here are a few more posts I found interesting, amusing, whatever.

• How About Punishing The Owners
• Update on “Times says we’re getting away with murder”
• Funding Terrorist note: As far as I can tell, the title and the actual post are utterly unrelated. Nevertheless, it’s a good rant.
• Military Strength v The Will to Win
• Rodriguez playing Alabama to stay at WVU?
• Enough!!!
• Robert Plant Records in Nashville
• Brownback 2008
• Science, Skeptics, God, and Magick
• Cherokee County, GA Passes Anti-Immigrant Ordinance

Slide by and leave a comment. You don’t have to agree with ‘em. It’s just blogging.

My best friend is an eight year old basset hound. In a little while, we’ll be visiting her dermatologist because of her ongoing skin problems. The tab will run from somewhere between $75 and $750 dollars, depending on what he has to do, and whether I get any prescribed meds from him, or from some other source. She’s an expensive pet. She’s provided me with years of companionship and I’m hoping she’s good for many more. She’s worth every penny and then some.

I guess I’m something of an animal lover. If animal flesh didn’t taste like meat, I probably wouldn’t eat it. I don’t particularly like the idea of research being performed on animals, but I don’t know enough about it to have a firm opinion, and I like it that way. If people want to wear fur, it’s none of my business, sort of like if they want to abort their babies. I’ve got enough to worry about with my basset, my mutt, my blog, and my addiction to DirecTV.

The Chinese recently were busy bashing the brains out of dogs in one of their god-forsaken provinces. It seems they’re in the midst of a rabies epidemic over there. I found the bashing distasteful, but less so than the thought of being mauled by a rabid dog. Apparently China is still very much a third world country, and things like pet vaccinations are as rare there as here in South Alabama. It’s unfortunate that people who aren’t up to the task insist on having pets, and children, but that’s none of my business. You have to pick your battles. Why pick fights you can’t win?

The great Chinese dog massacre flipped the animal rights people out. The SPCA even offered to send them a million dollars to stop the carnage. I thought that was nice. Maybe the Chinese can use the money to upgrade the abortion clinics where millions of unborn kids are cancelled yearly. Or not. It’s none of my business. I’m not taking it on.

The allergic basset, however, is my business. So I’ll fork over a nice chunk of change in an effort to make her as comfortable as possible. I’ll give her her multi-part baths. I’ll give her her pills and shots. I’ll feed her the expensive hypo-allergenic food she needs and loves. I’m lucky I get to do it, and I know it. This day in this life is enough for me to contend with without worrying about how someone else is handling their own battle with their own bullshit.