Dogs Have The Right To Live With People

During the past month, I haven't had many spiritual epiphanies but did get a couple more clients. One is writing for a New Zealand-based enviornmental blog called Celsias. I did one of my usual cute yet sarcastic posts about what dog owners may have to do in the future when their aren't any more free plastic carrier bags around to clean up doggy doo-doo.

Some of the comments were, quite frankly, appalling. More than one wrote that pet dogs should be banned for the sake of the health of human children. And they seemed to be serious.

I'm not sure what happened in these poor posters' lives to make them so anti-dog, but banning dogs is not the answer to our enviornmental problems. I'm sure Big Oil and Dow Chemical would love to make dogs' butts the scapegoats for global warming, but I don't think this conspiracy theory is gonna last too long.

We need dogs in our lives far more than we need other people. Animals don't pollute like people, they don't complain like people and they don't post nasty comments on blogs about banning humans from dog kennels. Dogs are just as sentient as we are -- perhaps even more so becuase of their abilities to forgive and accept -- and it is only because of them that many people have become more than just selfish consumers with opposable thumbs.

Pet dogs save their owners' lives every day. What's a bit of poo between friends?

Deities, Guns and Money

I love my job as a freelance writer. It's amazing the things you can learn. Just the other day, I discovered that God is a card-carrying member of the group Armed Females of America. The group doesn't go on to mention just what gender God is. Perhpas a male God would be given honorary female status if wanting to join the AFOA.

The mission statement reads that carrying guns is "A GOD GIVEN RIGHT" (their capitals) and that "WITH GOD'S BLESSING, and our diligence, we aim to remain free!" (By looking down the barrell of an elephant rifle, presumably).

I did not realize that the All Mighty needed a gun. I just kind of assumed that omnipotent thing excluded the need to stockpile weapons in an underground bunker.

Does anyone really need to invoke God's will in your desire to blow someone off the effing map? We all have a certain degree of paranoia and would like to always be able to defend ourselves. Especially those of us who have been victims of multiple physical assaults and robberies (such as I have).

However, I've also been shot at by people who mistook me for a deer, despite the fact that I have no physical resemblence to the animal. I look more like one of those flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. These are the Einsteins in Pennslyvannia that presumably have the right to own a lethal weapon as given by God. I guess God just shoved the guns in one hand and the beer in another.

After going through a lot of soul searching, I have come upon the illumination (with a lot of heavenly trumpet blasts and eardrums ringing) that it's NOT my God given right to own a gun (especailly since I don't know how to use one).

It's my GOD GIVEN RIGHT to own a machete.

When I lived in the woods in England, did I bother getting a gun? (And I easily could have). Naah. Just whip out a decent machete and let out a scream that could strip paint off the walls a mile away and suddenly you are suprizingly free of willing combatants.

I guess I could start the God's Chosen Machete Alliance and Freelancers Association of America. I could make some enough money to pay off my medical insurance premiums. Although it's my GOD GIVEN RIGHT to own a lethal weapon, it's not my God GIVEN RIGHT to get any life saving medical treatment after being wounded by my GOD GIVEN RIGHT.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Yes, silly me made a wish to get more clients and more work. I had a good reason for the wish, though. Medicare, in it's infinate lack of wisdom, dropped all of my health insurance despite me being classified in the "poverty" level of the national tax bracket. I need to double what I made last year in order to pay for my health insurance. So twice the work and it will be all spent -- on health insurance.

So I made my little wish to the universe.

And, of course, I'm now up to my seventh chakra in assignments. In one sense, it's nice to be busy. It keeps me from going postal over the cost of health insurance. But on the other hand, it means I can't do fun things like rant on here much anymore. Or sleep, for that matter.

In better news, I had two stories published in one week. Cataclysm Class is currently being ignored over at The Lorelei Signal and A Hero For Bobo is pissing people off over at Every Day Fiction.

Back to work. It's good for my health.