Once

“They” say to write things down.

My limits are being tested.  I don’t appreciate change, in fact, even though I know it’s beneficial and unavoidable, it just completely sucks.  This year…this last year, since May 2019, this is officially one of the worst.  I suppose that right about now many of us are saying that.

And yet where is the logic in waiting?  In staying?  What does tomorrow hold that will be meaningful and relevant, and that is worth staying around for?  This …. life.  This series of twenty four hour cycles during which I breathe and accomplish.  Accomplish what?  Enough so that my little chunk of cheese provides for me for one more week?  Then, we do it all over again.  Why?

I want so much to pour out all the minute details of the past month on this page….some of these details are identical for most of us – lockdown and isolation and too much damn time on our hands.  But “they” also say “When it rains, it pours.”  I’m soaking wet right now, and can’t find my way out of the rain.  Sure, I suppose it’ll stop at some point.  The sun will come out, the ground will dry, and life will be roses again.  Times like this make me hate roses.

Everything is you, little buddy.  Everything is a flash of your face, your life.  Except, you’re not here, mixed in with me and all the “everything”, buddy, you’re where I want to be…you’re “over there…”

I read in the news of the death of Dr. Lorna Breen, an emergency room physician in New York.  No history of mental illness, according to family, and yet this Sunday, she ended her life.  Her father, also a doctor, said that she spoke of situations in the hospital during this pandemic that were extremely stressful.  He said that “she was doing her job, and it killed her.”  I am basking in this story, and while that may sound rude or inappropriate, you see….I see this woman in a light that many wont.  She is “over there.”  She has done what I spend most of my waking hours dreaming, fantasizing about doing.  She had the courage to make a decision and follow through on a plan that would result in her death, and she did it.  She did it.  She, in whatever form she now takes, if any, “knows.”   She knows what happens at and after the moment of physical death.  She is either existing in another realm, plane, dimension, whatever you want to call it, or she is not.  As are that man in Ecuador who, just forty eight seconds ago, passed away from  corona virus complications, that woman in Cookeville, Tennessee who just succumbed to cancer two hours and seventeen minutes ago, Kobe Bryant and Mother Teresa.   I do not rejoice in the death of Dr. Breen.  I envy her.  I want what she has.  Right now, I want the courage and the determination to do what she did.  I am tired of the pointless today’s and tomorrows.  I am tired of the systems and the processes and the stupidity that turn on my lights and provide me all I can consume.  “Civilization” has taken our civility and smashed it on the ground like a billion glass balls.

Someone, somewhere, in all this media coverage of this pandemic, said “Why would we all possibly want a return to normal?”  It made me stop and think….what we have come to accept as normal.  We will twist and contort and mangle ourselves to achieve some ethereal, misty ideal, even though the damage we are doing to our spirits and souls is irreparable.  But achieving that ideal…living that lie, propagating that stereotype, bullying your way to dominion all others be damned…that is our “normal?”   That is the ideal, the goal, I am supposed to strive for for the rest of my days?  To continue lining the pockets of …

Best to not finish that sentence.  Pointless ramblings of a pointless person.

My little buddy, I’ll be writing again soon.  “They” say I need to write to you, and ask you for help grieving.  “They” say our reunion will be whatever I want it to be, “they” say that it is a proven scientific fact that energy cannot be eliminated, it can only change form.  “They” are implying we might see, experience, one another again.  “They” are well intentioned, and “they” are either right, or wrong.  You were my all.  You were my world.  You were my soul.  I swear….haven’t I dried up and died in the past six months?  Who am I anymore?  I don’t recognize myself.  I’m a total asshole.  People and their problems….who cares?  I died with you, buddy.  The only real difference is my body doesn’t have the sense to stop.  I miss you.

This is Raisin. She’s somewhere around three or four months old, and was abandoned at a park.

She’s helping me heal.  She’s a goofball.

The frustration and anger was building inside him. I could see it by his facial expressions and actions, yet he was holding back and not retaliating. Not yet, anyways.  He was biding his time, determined to exact his revenge, and he was not the only one, there were more. Still, I continued to antagonize them with childish insults and ridiculous behavior, knowing deep down that I was digging my own grave. Still, deep down, the anger and sadness drove me on, looking for a victim, looking for an outlet.

I didn’t know him, but didn’t like the way he looked. So I treated him like garbage, and instead of walking away, I continued my idiotic behavior, making them angrier and angrier with my insults and laughter.

And inside me the fear continued to build, the knowledge that I was getting myself into a situation that I wouldn’t be able to handle. But what the hell does it matter? I deserve to push back, docile passive aggressive ***** that I am, door-mat to the world that I am. I wanted to be the a**hole, the one pushing their buttons. I deserve my turn at the top, giving orders and making demands, having things go MY way, everyone else be damned.

Still, I’d have to answer to these very angry people, and soon.

That’s when I woke from the dream, an hour before my alarm would sound.

I’m a coward. I fear the world, I fear it’s inhabitants, their thoughts and their actions, their criticisms and opinions, their questions and their remarks. I fear much. I live a passive existence of taking what is given to me and pretending it’s all just fine.

Whatever.

Just a bad dream I had, one that startled me awake.

I will never stop missing you, buddy. Your loss has changed me. It has changed me, and in these three months, I have grown . . . angry. I rage at things that I once laughed off. I am becoming despondent, some would say. I am searching for another “you”, and maybe I shouldn’t be. You have become another voice in my repertoire of imaginary characters, now existing alongside Creature, Entity, Schrindleman, Miss Gwendolyn, Neck, Darnell and Chang, Viktor and Raja. Now there’s you, and we converse throughout the day, in an effort to quell this god forsaken loneliness. Imaginary friends. These are what I have to share my time with, and now you are one.

The dream that was you is over, and what’s left is all around – a bland, ugly world in which all I am doing is breathing, existing, and wondering what to do now.

I love you baby boy. I always will, that will NEVER change. I miss you with everything that I am. You were, and always will be, my heart and my soul, my life and my love, my world. I hope to see you again, Hooks.

Why do we assume that the limitations of our human brain will follow us into an afterlife? Why do we assume we will continue suffering as we are now, when we are dead?

Today is two weeks.

What is this thing, life? Just breathing, nothing more. It’s just weather, without you my little love, nothing more. I miss you.

March 2, 2012 – May 1, 2019

My little boy. Seven years was all we got together. I hoped and dreamed for more, but no, that can’t happen.

I will miss you eternally, Taco. Handsome-Perfect. Boogie. Bug. Hooks.

You changed my life, little boy. You taught me how to love, when noone else could.  You showed me what love feels like, when others failed. You are love. You are my eternal friend, my little kitty.

I’ll miss you from today until a time when whatever I am can no longer exist in any form, and then far, far beyond that.  I love you so much.

You’re my heart and my soul, my love and my life. You’re my world.

I have to give you back now.

Rest, little boy. I miss you. I love you. I love you.

Why?

My love. My heart. My soul. You’ve taken them all, and there is no answer why.

Why?

Rosemary requested release, and the memories returned to the people. . .

Hmmm.

So I wonder what exactly is going through Jonas’s mind, knowing that.

No spoilers. Still reading. Good story.

– NOT SUICIDE RELATED.Just reminiscing. –

My dad could build. He wasn’t a contractor, per se, he was in the telecommunications business. But somewhere along the way, someone taught him how to build. Stuff, things.

My town recently passed an ordinance banning plastic grocery bags, because apparently they are evil and destructive and naughty, and the universe must be saved from them. So, today, I bought three cookies and a small bag of potato chips and left the store holding one of those extra gonzo size heavy duty paper grocery sacks designated as “1/6  BBL (70#)  with “Renewable, recyclable, sustainable, and contains minimum 40% post-consumer material” printed on the bottom. Whew. The future of Earth is now safe, for eons to come.

Now, I must decide what to do with my extra gonzo bag.

As a kid, my dad built this “thing” – it was a storage compartment and trash can combo. The bottom part of it featured an area into which this sort of bag could be installed and held in place utilizing a simple binder clip assembly, filled with garbage and removed and replaced as needed. It worked wonderfully. Above that, was a storage area just slightly larger than these extra gonzo bags, into which as many as a hundred or so could be stored, provided they were folded neatly.

This contraption was just one of many such contraptions that dad designed and built. He did the lions share of the work on an addition to our family home when I was young. It took years of work on weekends and evenings, after his full time job, and mom hated that he insisted on doing as much of the work as possible in order to save money, but one day many years later, it was. . . complete. Dad’s greatest accomplishment, a memorial and testament to his skill and ability.

Dad found a basketball goal post for me once. It was buried in someone’s back yard, and he talked them into selling it so I could have it. It took the better part of a Saturday to remove it, he and I working together under a sweltering southwest Texas desert sun. At one point, the use of a heavy metal bar and a sledge hammer was necessary to break up some concrete. I had never swung a sledge hammer at the miniscule end of a steel bar before, and at the age of 14, lacked a refined sense of hand – eye coordination, but dad held the bar in his hands, told me to “focus only on the end of the bar, and try not to miss and hit my arms.”

I did, and I didnt. And roughly two weeks later, I had a nice new goal post in my front yard.

Dad trusted me that day. Without resevation, without visible doubt. He just told me what to do, and waited for me to do it. And I did it.

So, today, I’m staring at this extra gonzo paper bag, and trying to figure out where I’ll store it when I get home, but I don’t build. I do other things, but unlike dad, I don’t build.

I’ll probably use it to dispose of my cats used litter, since my city now says I can no longer purchase groceries and place them in plastic bags, which I then filled with the same litter.

I’ve hated my dad, disliked my dad, liked my dad, loved my dad, ignored him, scoffed at and disrespected him, secretly imagined killing him, and cleaned him after he soiled himself a few years before alzheimers claimed him. I shaved his face in a hospital once, and listened to him ramble about nothing and everything as we sat eating fried chicken in a fast food joint, during the early days of alzheimers. And I’ve buried my dad. I pinned two of his military service medals on the lapels of his suit jacket as he lay in his casket, the day of his funeral, and fought back tears as he received a twenty one gun salute at the cemetery, under not a sweltering sun, but a mild October sun in the desert of southwest Texas.

Dad broke me down, along with mom, over a lot of years. It’s what parents do. It’s what humans do. They succesfully crushed my spirit, and stifled me through years of just being human. It’s everyone’s story, the only difference is the names, the places, the dates, yeah, the details. Parents crush child, child hates parents, child buries parents, child reconciles as best they can, or maybe not.

I suppose I can start a collection of 1/6 BBL (70#) bags now, thanks to a new municipal ordinance.

Chuckle. Sigh.

I miss you, Dad.

Occasionally I need to restore perspective to my kooky mind.

Carl Sagans speech helps.

It reminds me how darn big everything really is, and how insignificant I am.

A photo of Earth, taken from somewhere around four trillion miles away, I believe, by a Voyager spacecraft, many years ago. Just a pale blue dot, inhabited by weenies.

Pass the mustard.

I am a medical transport driver, driving people to and from doctors appointments.

I am learning to value simplicity these days. To see blessings where previously I saw nothing.

Don had a ride scheduled for 7:00 this morning. He lives in an assisted living facility, or as another passenger referred to them recently,  “a warehouse for the dying.”

I arrived at 7, and the staff was running a bit behind, so they didn’t have him quite ready. Rush, rush, rush, ok, he’s ready to go. Out the door and into the van and off we go. Don is in a wheelchair. He is probably in his seventies, and his hands are large, and you can see that at one time he did physical work with them. His voice is deep and gruff.

“You’re going to have about a half hour before your appointment, and then afterwards, I’ll be bringing you back, Don.” I told him. “Let’s just get it done.” was his quiet reply. 

At the doctors office at 7:45, the front desk informed Don someone had made a scheduling error, and his appointment had been moved out two weeks, “You should’ve received a call, we’re so sorry Don.”

So we get back in the van, Don and his wheelchair all secured down nice and tight, and we head back to his warehouse, uhh, sorry, assisted living facility. I’m craving pancakes, and I wonder if Don had breakfast. I did, but I’m craving pancakes, bacon, coffee, the works. Mmmm.

“Don, did your staff give you breakfast?” I inquire.

“No.” In his deep, stern voice. It belies disappointment and desire, but it confirms his reality – no breakfast, it’ll just have to wait, when in days past, it didn’t have to wait, because Don didn’t wait for anyone. He didn’t need to.

“No.”

It’s now after 8:00.  Don’s appointment wasn’t until 8:20, and his return ride was scheduled for 9:45. By the time he would’ve been back at the ware-  uhh, sorry, facility, it would’ve been after 10:00, and maybe he would’ve received breakfast, brunch, lunch, who the hell knows.

Don struck me as a withered version of his younger days, when HE ran the show. When schedules revolved around him, and things were made and maintained through his sweat and effort. He reminded me of a broken down mans-man. He has the attitude of a man who knows he is in decline, who knows he’s been placed in a warehouse for the dying, where he will wait. For everything. For food. For cleaning. For laundry, for visits, for rides, for sunrise, for sunset, for tedious routine that finally leads to a day when he just won’t have to wait any damn longer, because. . . well, because. Don knows this. Resignation and memory are his companions. 

I wheeled Don back inside, and joked with him that “at least we got to see some scenery and freeze our balls off.”(Its COLD here today.)

He chuckled.

“It was a good ride” was his reply, as he went inside to wait for his overdue breakfast.

I drove to a fast food place, and parked. As I walked across the parking lot, thinking of hot coffee and a baked apple pie, I realized that today, right now, RIGHT NOW, life is ok. It’s ok. It’s simple, it’s got everything I need, and that’s a good thing.

Simplicity. I have my independence, I come and go as I please, and I have two cats that I love. And I have coffee and an apple pie waiting for me.

I want the world and all its shallow, empty lying promises – but right now, I’ve got everything I need. I want much more than I need. We all do. We don’t know, CAN’T know, contentment. It’s not our nature. Sigh.  The world has been kicking my ass, all of our asses, and it will continue to, but for now, it can wait for me and my coffee.

What did I do with the darn cream? It was right here. . .

My job brings me into close contact with people with various illnesses and physical challenges. It’s interesting for me to interact with people both older and younger than me who are dealing with situations that I cannot imagine dealing with. You can learn a lot about a person’s character when you spend time with someone who is living a life of tremendous difficulty, brought about by physical trauma or disease.

This is not a passing of judgment on Janet. I met her for the first time today and spent about 45 minutes with her. She is missing a leg, and I am unsure what else is going on in her life. She is a chain smoker and I suspect she may have cancer, but am only basing that on her diminished appearance. I could be wrong, and I didn’t ask.

She is living in “transitional care.” The implication there to me is that this is where one lives until other accommodations can be made, until a sufficient  “transition” can be made. Wow. I’m smart, huh?

Janet said transitional care is where you go to die. She is on the first floor of her facility – the public entrance is on the second floor, and it is an attractive and we’ll maintained area. Administrative offices, a large community room, a well organized nurses station and brightly lit hallways decorated with engaging art greets each visitor at this entrance.

The entrance to the first floor, to the “transitional care” area, is on the rear of the building. Near a large metal structure, covered with a ragged green tarp, inside which is a few folding chairs and a long table – the smoking area. The door to transitional care is the type of door you’ve seen on walk in coolers. Big, thick, heavy – industrial white.

Right next to the tarped smoking area.

Janet described the quality of the food as very bad, the staff as mediocre and usually overworked and inattentive. She relayed other details about the facility, and we both agreed that hey, man, whether the business is about housing dying humans or putting satellites in space, lowest bidder gets the contract and profits must be top priority – spend as little as you can and make as much as you can, and let the chips fall where they may, everything else be damned.

She has one sister who visits occasionally, but their relationship is strained, so you know, it’s just whatever it is. “Tis what tis.” She has a few friends, but they’re all in similar situations in the same facility.

I’m not sure what my point is with all this. I sympathize with Janet. I feel for her. I can sense her frustration, I can sense her fear and sadness, I can sense her aloneness. But I cant do a thing to help her. This is her life. She is fading from the bright white of life through the grays of transition into the black of forgotten. She is alone, she knows she is dying, she accepts it. She regrets not doing more fun things, not spending more money on vacations, or on friends and family. She is sad.

As I drove away today, she sat inside the tarped smoking area and lit a smoke. She looked at me and smiled, and gave me a wave. I treated her well during our brief time together today, because she deserves it. We all deserve it.

And for the briefest moment, in her smile and wave, I saw Janet as I’d never seen her before – full of her life, alive, but “transitioning.”

Damn. Makes me happy for what I’ve got. Makes me ponder my control over how I live or . . . “transition.”

Yeah.

When “life” is clearly on display, why do we (I) fight so hard to see around it, through it, to what I want it to be, as opposed to clearly seeing it for what it is?

Here it is. It’s the gray sky and freezing air of today’s snowfall. It’s the pain in my lower back. It’s the sadnesses of years, the happiness of decades. It’s the hope for tomorrow. It’s the reality of death, the certainty of now, the doubt of a tomorrow, the loss of then. It’s ladybugs humping on a leaf.

It just is. This is it. It’s evil mixed with good, pleasure mixed with pain, beauty and blight, sunrises and hurricanes. It’s all right here, in front of us (me), yet we (I) need to deny it the privilege of being what it is.

Someone will win an award. Someone will be shot in the left shin. Someone will feel love and tell all her friends, someone will wake to another depressing day of nothing. Far, far away, a rock will tumble from atop a mountain noone will ever know, and it will rest on the floor of an unseen planet, remaining there for eons. And a ladybug will give birth, while an ostrich dies. The game of life, the theater of that which is, in the only form it knows, and still, I (we) demand that it must conform to me (us). It must conform to my standards and meet my expectations. Wow.

It’s the only true reality. Yet we (I) insist it be something else – it must be what we (I) need it to be, because we (I) just don’t like it.

What will my attempts at manipulation garner? What will my screams and anger achieve?  What will raging and frothing accomplish? What will I change? The laws of life are set. “This is it kids, here it is, like it or not!” cries the ringmaster as the elephant goes berserk and crushes the clowns, while high above the acrobat spins above his safety net. This is it. I (we) control so little. Such little control, and so much insistence, such haughty demands that things just had better start working out the way we (I) want them to. Chuckle.

Well hells bells. Ain’t that just tough shit? I better get over my neediness, because life is just gonna keep on going, with or without me, like it or not.

Sigh.

I can’t imagine what it is like to feel love for a human. I can think of noone that I could or would ever love. Not family, not friends, noone. Absolutely noone.

Sociopath? Is this what I am?

We toss around sayings like “You only have one family!”, and “Blood is thicker than water!”, yet I would have absolutely no problem walking away from my family and never speaking to them again. I’m single, no children, big surprise there. I’ve learned love from animals, and can’t imagine a human being who is worthy of that kind of intense emotion.

My mother was an irrelevant figure in my life. Consequently, I see no use for a female partner now as a grown man. I’ve been in many relationships, and only felt miserable and trapped in every single one.

My dad was distant and aloof. The best advice he ever gave me was “Brush your scalp twice a day and you’ll never lose your hair.” Seriously. That was his best offering to me.

Genetically, my folks gave me a lot. I won’t get into the details, but they were good people, and they passed along quite a bit, but in terms of being role models who instilled in me the ability to feel loved, or to feel love, they proved incapable. No doubt they simply passed along what they experienced, so to be angry at them is pointless.

I will never have children, which is the best gift I could ever give them.

Love.

Love for a human being.

What??? Why??? What a waste of time and energy. How do you even begin??

Chuckle.

Apparently, global warming may now also be attributed to Christopher Columbus.

Wow. Someone paid for this study. Actual cash money was exchanged so we could learn. . . this.

Wow. Chuckle.

Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing is up to you to decide, but in all my years, I’ve never felt love towards another person.

I volunteer at a shelter and met this boy a month ago, when he was surrendered. He had a difficult month, he was in a quarantine for biting someone and he got sick for about two weeks. He was frightened and angry when he came in, but he overcame it all, and today, he’s being adopted.

He and I bonded in his month. I fell in love with him, I brushed him and petted him daily, helped him feel comfortable and loved, and while I’m glad to see him being adopted, (I’d love to, but my situation prohibits it) I’m feeling what poets write about losing love. Pain, crushing and debilitating.

For a goofy cat.

I love you Beau. You be a good boy in your new home. I’m glad I knew you.

“Open the pod bay doors Hal.”

“Open the pod bay doors Hal!!”

“I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that.”

Freakin’ Hal.

Yesterday afternoon, a small cat blocked an alley I was driving through. Wouldn’t move, just stood there, staring at me. Staring, and not moving. I honked the horn lightly, inched forward a bit, nothing. Just staring at me. Ahh hell. I was in a hurry, but I also love cats, so I got out and tried to shoo it away, but again, it just stared, immobile. Jesus flippin’ salami. I reached down and petted it, noting it’s bony spine. Very bony spine. It finally starts moving – towards my truck. No. Noooo. Go away cat, I’m going to be late. SHOOOO.

No. Staring at me still, it approaches the open drivers door. Ahh crap. I pick it up, put it in the back end, drive back to my apartment, rush inside and put it in my bathroom, along with a bowl of water and a plate of fresh wet food. Closing the door, I exit the apartment, noting the looks of extreme concern on MY two cats – “What the f_ _ k was THAT thing, and why is it in our house?” they seemed to be saying.

Several hours later, I arrived home, anxious to see an empty plate of food and a purring cat, waiting for whatever it was waiting for. I stopped at the store on my way home and arrived laden with all the necessities – litter pan, food and water bowl, soft bed. Figured I’d make the little thing comfortable while it stayed with me, and then I’d plan a course of action.

I found a mess. Sitting in a puddle of pungent urine on my bathroom floor, eyes almost completely shut with some type of black crust, matted fur, the insides of her ears black with greasy grime. Nails that have gone untrimmed for a long time. There’s a sad phenomenon whereby a cats claw will grow back into the pad of its own foot, in a hook shape, and embed itself in the paw if it remains untrimmed. It must be painful, I guess. She had four of ten front nails doing this. These nails hadn’t been trimmed in years.

Emaciated. She was skin and bone. Literally. Very little muscle tone, really unable to walk, hence her failure to move as my truck approached her. She just stared. And waited.

I cleaned her eyes, her ears, trimmed her nails. She was a filthy mess. All the while, that bony spine, those pronounced ribs and hips. Literally skin and bone.

She spent the night in my bathroom, inside a box, on her new soft bed, with a new box of litter and a dish of water and tuna fish close by. She ate and drank nothing, all night long. She used the litter box one time. I woke up around 2 a.m. with the thought that she could probably use a little company. Maybe I needed the company. Regardless. So, I went into the bathroom, and put an old towel on my lap, and put her on my lap, and started scratching her. She started purring. It was an old purr. It spoke of internal mechanisms that are shutting down, that have seen better days. She flexed her front claws repeatedly, what cat people call “making biscuits”, a sign of contentment. We sat there, I on my toilet in a room that reeked of cat pee and a sick animal, she on a towel, stretched out across my warm lap, purring like your grandfather’s 1975 pickup truck – roughly, tired, wanting a break, wishing to sleep, eternally.

I went back to bed, and woke this morning to more mess on the bathroom floor, only this time it wasn’t urine. She wasn’t in her bed anymore, she was on the tile floor, looking sad.

I worked a few years at the front desk of the shelter I brought her to this afternoon, and recall seeing only two or three cats in worse condition than this one. Often, when a pet owner commits to having a pet euthanized, they would ask me if they were making the right decision, because even though their pet had been ill and  lethargic and depressed for weeks, maybe months, years,  “today suddenly, she just looks so alive, or he’s perked up and wagging his tail, are we doing the right thing?”  Yes, you’re doing the right thing, your pet realizes it’s suffering is going to end, and it is expressing relief. They know. They know. And owners see it, all the while wondering if a miracle has occured, and reconsidering is an option. It’s not.

She perked up on the ride to the shelter. She was sitting up inside the carrier, looking around curiously. Her ears were at attention. A frightened cat lies still, ears often flattened. She was alive, she was hopeful, and as her body was shutting down, her spirit was happy. She knew.

I did the paperwork with the girl at the front desk, then said a quick goodbye to this skinny dying cat. She was staring again. Right at me, with her bright green eyes.

Memories of good food, of good rubs, of clean litterboxes, of soft beds and good living. Who knows what happened to leave her on her own, body breaking down and disease having its way with her as she struggled for survival as a stray. Skin and bones, and memories. And yesterday afternoon, with a stare and the will to stand firm and not move, she forced my hand. She’d had enough, and played her card.

A little over an hour ago, she was euthanized. I’m guessing she was around seventeen years old, and, well, fuckin’a man, I’m just damn sad right now. The world and it’s bullshit can kiss my ass. The politics, politicians, the government’s and the wars, the greed and corruption and insanity, the games and the cruelty, the despair and the hate, the anger, callousness, sarcasm and humanity  – none of it matters a hill of beans to me right now.

I don’t form connections with humans. A staring human wouldn’t receive this treatment from me. But a cat – a dog – a lizard – yeah, these I’ll help. Not sure what that says about me, but good or bad, that’s me.

What a world we live in where we force suffering to continue. What a load of pig shit when a bureaucrat with an agenda says “No – you may NOT choose to end your life, because in order to retain my job, I must appear to care about the sanctity of human life and deny you the opportunity to be humanely euthanized.” What a world it truly is, where a cat can stare, and in that stare convey a message of exhaustion and pleading, and in so doing, receive freedom from what had to be agonizing suffering.

A damn cat.

Before she was euthanized today, shelter staff had to assign her a name, for the records. Well, they don’t have to, but often they do. They named her Chocolate Chip. And she’s free now.

(Intense sarcasm warning!)

I’ve never found an opinion that I enjoyed more than his, when it comes to “saving the planet.” For a comedian, he made more sense than anyone I ever heard. If youve never heard this man, give him a try. Hope you enjoy.