The Voice of Treason

“Mistake” seems to be coming up a lot on the other side; on the right side, the “m” stands for “maverick.” Another way to look at this is: If “m” stands for mistake, then “m” stands for McCain.

It appears that the senator is slipping a bit in the polls. This shouldn’t be surprising because he no longer has the support of yet another m-word - the media. There’s a new kid in town. One who’s more telegenic and who represents the party of choice.

McCain’s “maverick” quality was once attractive, now it just makes him look crotchety. In one week he attacked Dick Cheney and called Donald Rumsfeld the worst defense secretary in history. That’s not maverick - that’s mean. And most people on the right - the people McCain’s trying to win over - are not going to agree with his opinion of Rumsfeld. McCain has a history of showing warmth to those on the other side of the aisle: Where’s his congeniality chromosome when he’s dealing with members of his own party?

He tried to steal attention on the day Romney announced he would run, saying that he, too, was preparing to make the same announcement. That was tacky. And a little mean. And a tad rickety, too.

Didn’t he say he would formally make his announcement around the middle of March? But now he’s made it official - a premature enunciation - and he did it on the Letterman show. How odd is that? Wasn’t he trying to convince conservatives that he was one of them? That he was Reagan redux? Reagan wouldn’t have announced on Letterman. The people McCain’s trying to suck up to don’t even watch that show.

So now that he’s losing ground to younger, fresher candidates, is McCain trying to be cool? Sorry, no one’s buying it. McCain is right on some issues (”m” is for military), but wrong on too many others.

I look at McCain and I see the troll who lives under the bridge. I don’t know what he’s like to live with, but his wife - who has always been stunningly beautiful - always looks unhappy, too. Can the expression on her face be called McPained?

If Republicans settle for McCain because they like his position on abortion, they’ll be settling for a Democrat in 2008. If they think supporting a pro-choice Republican means a victory for the Left, they may win the battle but lose the war.

Clearly the GOP has learned little from the November election. The party is still stuck in the mud. I suggest the Republicans wake up, smell the coffee, and find a maverick to represent them. Time to turn that W upside down.

M is for Mitt. M is for Mayor. M is not for McCain. I am not for McCain.

When I was a little kid I liked to go off by myself. One method was to leave Joyce Kilmer Elementary School in the afternoon and walk in the opposite direction of our apartment building. I’d walk on streets that I’d never walked down before and kept walking until I realized that it was either getting too cold or too dark to continue my journey. By that time I’d usually be lost. Still, I always managed to find my way home.

After I mastered a two-wheeler, I’d ride my bike instead. I’d wheel it out to the front of our building, look down the street one way, then the other, and wait for a little voice to tell me which way to go. Sometimes it was that way: I’d peddle past Pratt, Lunt, Touhy, and Jarvis towards Evanston. Sometimes it was the opposite way: I’d ride past the Granada Theatre, Loyola University, Mundelein College, and all the way past the Edgewater Beach Hotel and Apartments. I’d stop my bike and just stare, wondering if one day I’d live in that perfectly pink place.

During our year in Prescott, I walked and rode and covered as much area as I could, just to absorb my new desert landscape. I explored. I went places I didn’t know existed. Did the same in California and when I went off to college I’d get in my car and drive for hours…getting lost, but always managing to find my way home.

And now I take these little journeys without leaving the house. No, not LSD, silly. PC. I sit down at my computer and find a site that leads me to another, then another, then another, until I get to the point where I can’t remember where I started. Talk about time vampires.

Today I sat down to read a bit of NRO and was immediately sucked in. Just too many really fine articles - politics, popular culture, history, biography, film and book reviews. I finally landed on a Brookhiser piece about Washington Irving. And that led me to a memory of how much I enjoyed playing Authors when I was a kid. So I looked up the game online and saw the same deck of cards I’ve had for decades. That game was my introduction to literary genius. I then thought of all the streets I knew named after Irving and a little spot I knew called the Irvington District. Irving had also lived in Sunnyside. I knew of a Sunnyside or two and ended up following that lead to a website belonging to an artist who graduated from my university the year I started there and paints well, yet way wacky. I liked what I saw. From his site I found his web designer’s that listed eclectic links - some decidedly Libertarian - and somehow ended up looking at architecture in Rotterdam. Specifically something called the Urban Cactus housing project. In two hours I’d traveled from New York to the West Coast, up 101 to Seattle, then over to the Netherlands.

These jaunts have become for me quick trips down Memory Lane. I can retrace my childhood journeys, leave my elementary school website and go from there. It’s how I discovered the fate of the Granada and the Edgewater Beach Hotel. Sometimes I look at places I’ve been and buildings I’ve seen and it’s a big colorful scrapbook without the paper and paste.

So today I was in Rotterdam. I stood on a flower-lined terrace and watched clouds roll over boats in the harbor. One long trip from the high desert. It didn’t get cold, it didn’t get dark, my legs didn’t hurt, but I did get very, very lost.

Still, I managed to find my way home again.

But enough about last night’s Oscar presentation. For our consideration: one reeeeally long predictable broadcast gone green. But I don’t want to spend too much time pointing out Hollywood hypocrisy when it’s something so obvious. (Uh, those weren’t real diamonds, were they? Uh-oh…)

Everyone wants a part of the glitz and glamour, and Nuevo Mexico is no exception. Our post-Oscar newscast began with this story: “NM Man Wins Oscar!” Yes, Alan Arkin has a Santa Fe address and - who knows? - maybe Joe and Valerie Wilson are his neighbors.

But Nuevo Mexico loves Hollywood and has opened its doors to the Left Coast, broadening its film industry. Why, several studios have moved here and I can name a dozen projects that are in production as I type this. But the film industry is one of waste and pollution. Remember the UCLA study that revealed how the film and television industry creates more pollution than aerospace manufacturing, apparel, hotels and semiconductor manufacturing? When people complain about Hollywood filth and the pigs who work there, they ain’t kiddin’.

But it’s smart for Nuevo Mexico to court Hollywood. When global warming finally picks up speed and California dips into the Pacific and becomes one with the Humboldt Squid, we might actually create some jobs in this state. We say we have an abundance of artists and great minds here in the Land of Enchantment, yet one might not guess that based on the recent uninspired designs proposed for the New Mexico quarter. (Zzzzzzzzzz is for zia.) Hey, let’s put those skills to work and blow up some sets!

But last night’s hypocrisy has sparked an interesting debate and has generated my favorite quote of the day. This one from non-blonde Dagen McDowell on Cavuto’s show:

“Not every environmentalist in this country - people who care about the environment - is some patchouli hemp-wearin’ freak chained to a tree…And, frankly, if every American listened to what Al Gore said last night and changed their behavior and changed their habits then we wouldn’t need government to step in.”

Well, hell, that’s what conservatives have been saying for years. It’s the solution for almost every problem, isn’t it? But this particular problem is climate change and I’m just looking to Hollywood to see if it’s doing what they’re telling us we should do. I’m happy to report that Philip Seymour Hoffman is doing his part and, based on last night’s coif, has pledged to stop shampooing. Bravo. But I certainly don’t want another four-hour lecture from these people. Look, I’ve pointed this out many times before. I conserve. I recycle. I use water sparingly and can’t remember the last time I washed my vehicle. I drove that 1984 Renault Alliance for over sixteen years and it only had 69,000 miles on it when I gave it away. And, frankly, I’ve done more than most people on this. Once I’m dead and my usable organs have been harvested, what’s left of me will be cremated. And then I’m done, having left no progeny on the planet to further pollute. Me and my tiny carbon footprint will have disappeared forever. Fin!

Enough of the lectures from the beautiful people. Perhaps those in Hollywood should consider limiting their own sequels.

A few years ago I made friends with an outspoken red-haired Liberal who grew up in Texas and, because of her line of work, spent a good deal of time in Washington around politicians. She had a collection of stories about “the Bush boys,” Algore, and local politicos, and she seemed to have an anecdote for everything.

The consensus at work was that she was completely full of sh*t. But it didn’t really matter to me that hers was a vivid and wild imagination; whether genuine or fabricated, her stories were always entertaining. And fun to listen to over a couple vodka martinis.

One day we met up for a taste test - Guinness or Murphy’s? - and she was talking about a meeting she’d had with Algore. Somehow we got on the topic of recycling.

“Hey, if it makes you feel better, go on ahead, but you’re really wasting your time.”

“Fine Liberal you are. So you’re saying you don’t recycle?”

“Hell, no. Not here. Everything you spend your precious time separating for recycling just ends up in landfill. It’s in the dump with all the regular trash. You didn’t know that?”

The room started spinning and I damned near fell off my barstool. My life was flashing before my eyes - yes, my life as a series of TV commercials - starting from the time when Smokey’s middle name was “The.” I saw Chief Iron Eyes Cody on horseback. The words “Don’t be a litter bug!” were pounding inside my head like the sound of the garbage can lid against Carlo Rizzi’s face.

“You okay?”

It felt like the time when I had my dog cremated and then a local reporter broke the story that our pet crematory was playing fast and loose with the remains of our deceased pets. Who the hell is really in that urn? Muffy the cat? Peanuts the poodle? Polly the parrot? Vinnie the ferret? Is it, or is it not, my beloved brindle Boxer Barbara?

Being deceived is one thing, but suspecting it and having it confirmed is agony. “Toss no mas,” my ass. See, Toss No Mas is our state’s anti-litter campaign. Someone somewhere decided that the highest litter offenders are males who range in age from 16 to 24. Probably the same ones who toss their empty beer bottles from their cars as they’re speeding through the streets of Albuquerque. One commercial shows a young Hispanic couple in their car: the male casually tosses his trash and his girlfriend points out that he’s littering. He stabs her repeatedly and leaves her in the desert to die. Just kidding.

Another ad presents a Hispanic family spending quality time together, tossing debris from the back of their pick-up truck on to the mesa, along with a new litter of pitbull puppies. Just kidding. (Actually, people do toss their unwanted pitbull puppies out in the middle of the mesa, but I’m not about to get into that at this juncture because it’s too early in the day for me to have a stroke.)

Before you call me a racist or xenophobe, I’m not the one producing the ads aimed at a particular demographic. No doubt you’ve seen border footage - piles of trash in the desert left by illegals sneaking into the country. Except it doesn’t stop at our southern border. Nuevo Mexico is a pigsty.

When we moved here, much of the area was still open mesa, filled with native plants, jackrabbits, roadrunners, and coyotes. My first reaction was to hope that these areas would remain undeveloped. But time passed and I quickly changed my mind. What’s the point of open space if people are just going to fill it up with broken beer bottles, used condoms, dead appliances, and piles of garbage?

I had to ask myself: Is this a cultural thing? Is it only uptight white people who teach their children to put their trash in the proper receptacles? Is it only uptight white people who stand at the kitchen sink, paralyzed, wondering if they should recycle the cat food cans?

“I should do this. I know I should do this. But I need to rinse the cans first. Do I use precious water to rinse these cans and perhaps ‘waste’ another valuable resource? Oh, what to do! What to do!”

We don’t have a bottle law in this state, and even though I hate these layers of regulation, I have to wonder if putting a value on a beer bottle might help to reduce the number of broken ones that prevent me from enjoying a simple walk with the dog.

Unlike California, residents have not been provided with recycling bins to put out on the curb. In fact, when we moved here, the city hadn’t even supplied citizens with trash receptacles for weekly garbage pick-up. No, we dumped our trash bags outside and waited for stray dogs to tear open the Hefty bags, or for a murder of crows to swoop down and pick through our debris and spread it all over the neighborhood before it was picked up for disposal.

When the city finally got around to addressing recycling, the rules were so complicated that most people determined that it was easier to just throw everything in the trash and learn to live with the guilt. I still don’t put my recyclables out on the curb. It’s just easier for me to periodically round everything up and drive it to the nearby recycling dumpsters.

I’ve been doing this for ages, but I always remember my friend and her story about how it’s all dumped in landfill and how we’ve been sold a bill of goods. And then a news story broke recently about how 150 tons of recyclables were dumped with the rest of the trash. Sounds like a supervisor “took it upon himself” to make that decision and now the city promises to recover the lost recyclables. The problem, of course, is they had workers sort through it (no, seriously, they did) and they were able to pull out maybe two tons. But the city wants to assure us that they’re on top of the situation. They will “make up the difference” by sorting business trash - trash that usually goes straight to landfill - and pulling 148 tons of recyclables out of that. Just so we who recycled that original 150 tons don’t feel like we wasted our time. Oh - and the city is thinking about installing a Web cam so citizens can watch the trash being delivered to the dump and see that their paper, glass, and aluminum are actually being kept separate from the “real” garbage and occasional dead bodies. This is called “restoring the public trust.”

The particulars of our current program are too convoluted to explain here but suffice it to say that Nuevo Mexico is not on the cutting edge. We don’t have a system that actually recycles material; instead, we sell off what we can to businesses that are capable of recycling, and we stockpile the rest. Can we interest you in a mountain of broken glass?

So really what we have here is a recycling program that doesn’t actually work. But there are plans to fix the problem and once our politicians figure out how they can convince the taxpayers of Nuevo Mexico to finance these plans, we’ll be catching up to some of the other states. Garbage, after all, is a terrible thing to waste.

But I guess it’s like Barbara, in her “Urn of the Unknown Canine.” Maybe it’s not her and maybe it’s someone’s silver tabby, but I know — whomever it is — that someone somewhere took the time and effort to dispatch their pet with considerable expense and dignity instead of just tossing a cold body in landfill.

So maybe it’s a question of respect, then. Of finding value in something that others might deem garbage. And maybe that’s why I continue to fill up my car each week and drive to the recycling center. Either that, or I’m just an uptight, gullible whitey.

D-List Update

Running:

1. Joe Biden
2. Barack “Barama” Obama
3. Chris Dodd
4. John Edwards
5. Hillary (and Bill)
6. Bill Richardson
7. Dennis Kucinich
8. Mike Gravel

Waiting to hear something:
9. Algore

Possible add-ons:
10. Wesley Clark
11. Howard Dean
12. Nancy “Mee-Mee” Pelosi
13. The Reverend Sharpton

Jumpers:
1. Mark Warner
2. Russ Feingold
3. Tom Daschle
4. Evan Bayh
5. John F. Kerry
6. Tom Vilsack

Transcript from Larry King Live
February 10, 2008

SENATOR CLINTON: “But you know, Larry, I’d prefer to talk about the future. It’s time for the party to make a choice, a very clear choice, I think, about the future of the party, the future of the country, and in many ways, the future of the world. It comes down to me and Senator Hussein Osama — “

SENATOR CLINTON: “Yes, Larry. In a terrible freak car accident. You didn’t hear?”

LARRY KING: “No. News to me.”

– Rob Long, The Long View; National Review/March 5, 2007

The D-List:

Running:

1. Joe Biden
2. Barack “Barama” Obama
3. Chris Dodd
4. John Edwards
5. Hillary (and Bill)
6. Bill Richardson
7. Dennis Kucinich

Waiting to hear something:
8. Algore

Possible add-ons:
9. Wesley Clark
10. Howard Dean
11. Nancy “Mee-Mee” Pelosi
12. The Reverend Sharpton

Jumpers:
1. Mark Warner
2. Russ Feingold
3. Tom Daschle
4. Evan Bayh
5. John F. Kerry
6. Tom Vilsack

The R-List:

Running:
1. Duncan Hunter
2. John McCain
3. Rudy Giuliani
4. Tommy Thompson
5. Mitt Romney
6. Sam Brownback
7. Tom Tancredo
8. Mike Huckabee
9. Ron Paul
10. Jim Gilmore

Waiting to pounce:
11. Newt Gingrich

Running whether we like it or not:
12. George Pataki

There’s been talk, but which party?:
13. Michael Bloomberg

And speculation:
14. Chuck Hagel

Please…not now and not another so soon:
15. George Allen

In the same boat, but not necessarily the Titanic:
16. Jeb Bush
17. Condi Rice

Won’t run if nominated, won’t serve if elected:
1. Richard B. Cheney

Jumpers:
2. Bill Frist
3. Frank Keating

When we moved here twelve years ago, there was a sign posted on a nearby lot announcing the construction of a Wild Oats. I was thrilled. The idea of a food store within walking distance appealed to the urbanite in me (we walked to the grocery store when I was a kid), but the concept of organic produce and artisan bread appealed to my city kid’s fantasy of one day living on a farm. The best of both worlds — a hop, skip, and jump away.

I could picture myself, trudging up our hill in the early evening after work, clutching a fragrant baguette, an assortment of fresh veggies, some animal that died a happy death, and a bottle of obscure wine. But it never materialized. The store was never built and the sign eventually faded and tipped over.

Probably a good thing. I tried shopping at Wild Oats a few times - with the best intentions - but I just never liked the place. It was pretentious, overpriced, and, frankly, annoying. I always felt like I was being taken advantage of. I’d joke about their four dollar tomatoes, but knew the joke wasn’t really funny. The place, and its unhealthy looking clientele and employees, just rubbed me the wrong way.

Time has passed. Our city has opened several new markets since then and shoppers have a choice. Whole Foods has appeared, and so has Trader Joe’s. Raley’s - which was Nob Hill in California - has numerous locations in addition to the other giant supermarket chains. A little store called Sunflower Farmers Market is close and they’re opening another one across town. All the major chains have broadened their natural and organic food sections. We have Wal-Marts, Super Wal-Marts, a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, Sam’s Club, Costco, and a wide variety of meat markets, seafood markets, farmers markets, and ethnic markets. Even stores that didn’t use to sell food are selling it now.

So what does this mean? Competition. And that’s a very good thing. I can go anywhere and find a half-way decent tomato that doesn’t cost four dollars. And what I had started to notice recently was that Wild Oats was sending me attractive color ads in the mail, and not only were they offering a better selection of products, but their prices were finally coming down. I was even starting to think about giving them another try because maybe I could afford to shop there, after all.

But this morning I heard the news. Whole Foods is buying Wild Oats. It’s being called a merger, a “coming together to create a company that will be much stronger and well-positioned,” a blending of “synergies.” Whatever they want it call it, that’s fine. But this is an interesting development. We have one Whole Foods in town, and three Wild Oats stores. Will Whole Foods close any Wild Oats stores, or will they convert any to Whole Foods? Will they expand to the ever-growing West Side? How will this affect selection and price now?

Currently I don’t patronize either market because I know where I can get comparable food at better prices. And, frankly, I don’t want to drive all the way across town to shop. But this will be fun to watch nevertheless.

“Everybody in politics lies, but they (the Clintons) do it with such ease, it’s troubling.”

– Senator Barack Obama

When I first heard about this little flap, the first thing I did was run to the kitchen to check my supply of Orville Redenbacher. But then I took a breath, closed my eyes, clicked my heels together and told myself:

“I will not be sucked in. (Click.) I will not be sucked in. (Click, click.)”

Right now the only thing that’s even remotely interesting about this is how the Left is attacking Maureen Dowd. And why is Geffen being criticized? He’s merely stating facts. Bill Clinton is “reckless” and both he and Hillary do lie.

I understand Geffen’s position completely. It reminds me of the non-profit where I’d invested too much of my time and energy. It didn’t matter how well-intentioned they were or how hopeful we were, that organization took advantage of people and lied to them. Relentlessly. Shamelessly. The way I see it is Geffen doesn’t want to be fooled again. And who can blame him?

But Hillary’s response is absurd. For two seconds this week I actually respected something that came out of her mouth, and that was her resistance to utter the m-word and her subsequent advice to voters: There are others in the pack to choose from. If you don’t like what I’m saying (or not saying), vote for someone else.

Yet Liberals are mortified. Why is Obama engaging in politics? Why is he saying mean things? This is like the whole issue I had the other day with Kucinich and his Department of Peace. Like I said, hawks eat doves for breakfast. I’ve seen it. But I’ve also seen young, quick doves swerve in mid-air, evade hawks, and live to fly another day. Obama can play the dove, or he can choose instead to just be younger and quicker.

As for Govzilla, our Bill actually makes a good point. Once you get past his obvious motives -

1. He can’t criticize an administration (Bill Clinton’s) he was part of
2. He can’t criticize a administration (Hillary Clinton’s) he wants to be part of
3. He wants to remind us (again) that he went to school to study diplomacy and he’d be great at Secretary of State if President or Vice-President doesn’t work out

- you’ll see that he’s saying something that most of us will agree with. We watch a group of presidential wannabes campaign and they all promise to run positive campaigns. We say that’s what we want. But every candidate eventually resorts to mudslinging and negativity, and the one who emerges from the political puddle with the least muck goes on to represent the party. And that’s when all the other muckrakers line up behind their leader and say great things about him and try to get everyone else to get in line, too.

It’s one of those awkward aspects about party politics: Yes, we said terrible things about him when we were running against him, but now we’re for him and you should be, too. Huh? So…were you all lying then, or are you all lying now?

So here’s my political fantasy. Liberals are all hoping for the candidate who can rise above all this and not engage in the ugliness of political campaigning. What if Republicans - with their congeniality chromosome - take Richardson’s advice instead? So far most of them have been complimentary towards one another and have been coy, pointing out that the other Republicans in the race are not “bad” - they’re just “different.” So what if Republican candidates highlighted the differences - their varied positions on the major issues - and stayed positive? Could that blasted congeniality chromosome actually work in the party’s favor for once?

Like I said…it’s a fantasy.

“It’s a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on…it’s all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it jumping the shark.”

– www.jumptheshark.com

I was going to say this a week ago, after the “special” two-hour airing, but I figured I’d hold off because I tend to be a tad critical. Maybe it was just me. And, really, I’m pretty charitable. It was T, having more trouble than I with the suspension of belief, who initially pointed out the problem.

“God, that was…horrible.”

T observed early in the series that Mary Lynn Rajskub, the actress who plays Chloe, always looks like she’s smelling something awful. (”What - is there a cat turd on her keyboard?”) We watched last night and I found myself commenting that several of the actors were starting to look a bit too much like Chloe.

“Strange. They all look like they’re smelling something bad. Maybe what they’re smelling is the script.”

It started to make sense. I’d caught a bit of an interview with Kiefer Sutherland and he was dropping hints that the show could go on without Jack Bauer. Maybe Kiefer, too, had caught the whiff. Suspicions were confirmed when I heard a little of Rush today and even he mentioned he’s been getting some correspondence about the new episodes of 24. Ah…so there are others. Hmmmm.

But Rush was quick to defend the series, saying that after last night’s episode the viewers’ fears of mediocrity should be assuaged. At what point was he making that observation? There was Jack, on his knees, his father pointing a gun at his head, and I…well, I hate to admit it but I fell asleep. That little voice in my head told me to wake up and Jack was on the phone with Logan, the former disgraced president.

Okay, that could be interesting. Even though bringing back a character is usually a solid indication that the writers are getting a tad desperate and are in the midst of some serious shark jumping. But I assume this is the reason Rush is cutting the series some slack, so I’ll stick with it for now…and hope that my skepticism doesn’t get in my way.

Damn. It’s starting to feel like a replay of last November’s election…

I’m old enough to remember when the Chinese zodiac referred to it as the Year of the Boar. It appears that term is passe now, and people prefer to be called pigs rather than boars. Without sounding too much like Elizabeth Kucinich, who waxed poetic on her blog about her mum, grandmum, herself, and her Dennis all being Librans, I must point out that T and I are both, because of our parents’ poor planning, Librans. The dog and her late brother? Librans. Our closest friends? Librans. I suspect that’s because it takes a Libran to tolerate another Libran.

T and I are Pigs, too. Boars…Pigs…whatever. My mother’s one, my sister’s one, I’m one, T’s one. I went online last night to review what it means to be a Pig in the Year of the Pig, and I discovered there are variations of Pig according to different elements. For instance, my mother’s a Water Pig. My sister’s a Fire Pig. I am an Earth Pig. T is a Metal Pig.

Enchanting, no?

Britney Spears is not a Pig. No, she is a Rooster who has been acting like a pig. (Note, please, that this is lower case pig and refers to swinish human behavior, not real porcine behavior or zodiacal attributes. Terrible how our swine friends on the farm get a bad rap, yet it is us who eat them.)

We are seeped in a mud puddle of girls-gone-wild, and some are worried that sluttish behavior, as demonstrated by the likes of Britney, Paris, and Lindsay, will encourage young girls to emulate their bad behavior. After non-stop coverage of girls beating the stuffing out of one another, an astronut in a diaper, a dead buxom blonde, and shots of a pop tart’s crotch, Britney has finally done something I can support. She has shaved off her long abused locks and is now a girl gone bald.

I think all women should shave their heads at least once in their lives - I did it back in autumn of 2005 and I’m itching to do it again. The problem is that I have to go out and get a job, and the world is just not ready for bald women. My heart skipped a beat when I heard that Britney ditched her hair: Why, could this be a new trend? Nah. Because Britney has no balls. She wept after the act, whined about how her mother would react, then showed up at a club in a blonde wig. So I don’t foresee thousands of adolescent females shaving their heads to emulate Britney. Going without undies and acting like sluts, yes, but losing their hair, no.

Key word here: choice. Girls will choose which behavior they want to copy. Misbehavior is attractive. Head stubble? Not so attractive. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am. If women could just let go of their hair and their purses, we could really accomplish something.

But the Britney story’s already fading. Do you know there’s a black Lab trapped on Mt. Hood? If you watch CNN, you might not; but if you’re a FOX fan, you know all about it. FNC is stuck on reporting about that Lab. I realize there are more important issues…we are at war, after all…but I want someone to save that poor dog.

I remember when we moved to Nuevo Mexico, we heard the story about the hiker who took his Rottie up into the Sandias on a hot day and the dog died on the trail. Heat stroke. T and I had planned a day at Tent Rocks several years ago and we thought long and hard before we took our dogs there. We had water and other supplies for them and we were willing to lift and carry them when the terrain got tricky. (Well, T was willing. He can lift a hundred pound dog - I struggle. And that right there is a good reason why I shouldn’t own large breed dogs.)

T hikes and climbs, and that’s his choice, not the dog’s. Therefore, he would not subject our dog to a strenuous walk through the wilderness. When we went to Bosque del Apache in the middle of the night to see the cranes and such at sunrise it was bitterly cold. We stood outside the truck shivering, while the dog was in the bed of the truck, under the shell, wrapped in blankets. She could smell the bosque, see the bosque, but still remain cozy.

I watch Westminster every year, yet I’ll never show a dog of my own. I got involved with the Barbaro story, but can’t really say I support racing. I know people who keep animals who work and, when questioned about it, they report: “They love this!” Do they? I imagine some do. Or not.

You can see the problem here. I can’t support most animal rights groups and legislation because I know how irrational I am when it comes to animals. No, actually, that does make sense. I don’t when it comes to most issues concerning animals.

Case in point: I’m a Pig. I like pigs and I still weep when I read Charlotte’s Web. But I also have a fridge full of colored bell peppers and I’m seriously considering them with Italian sausage tonight.

Wonder how that poor Lab’s doing…