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In the Eyes of a Dog

12/25/2016

We have the world’s happiest dog – Thor! His tail is a wagging machine. He sniffs, he smiles, he jumps on you with joy and a smile.

How do dogs smile? I’m not sure. But he does it. You look at him and can’t help but smile back. He infects humans with bliss, a not insignificant positive quality that I wish he could instill in us upright standing beasts.

Since that is not the case, let’s recount some of the world through the eyes of a dog excitedly responding to cues we didn’t know existed:

“MOM AND DAD ARE HOME! Oh boy, oh boy, there goes the car door. I better jump on the front door so they know I’m here. Now I’ll yelp a few times, let them know I’m going to leap into their arms. HERE THEY ARE! HERE THEY ARE! YAHOOOEEEEE!”

“WALK? Did you say ‘WALK?’ Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, take me now, I’m ready, I can’t wait, let me leap as high as I’m capable to show you just how ready I am. What do you mean you have to find the leash? Open the door now. Come on, come on, what’s holding you up. Ah……”

“Is that the can opener I hear? I think it is. What’s that I’m sniffing now? I get it. DINNER TIME! Bring it on human being. Scrape that can out. Throw some dry on top of the canned meat. I can sniff it from the other side of the house. Mix it up into a fine mash so I can properly get all the juices and crunchy texture so it feels like I’m chowing down on some animal, crunching the bones, just like the old old days, when we really used to hunt.”

“Daddy, you’re going down to the basement to stretch out? Can I come too? Please, please, please. I’ll roll around on the pad and let you scratch my stomach for 10 minutes. You can pet me on the back, massage my head and flick my ears. I’ll sit on your stomach and pant in your face while you do sit-ups. Won’t that be fun?”

“WHAT!?!?!??! You mean you’re not going to let me in the car with you? How insensitive is that? After all I’ve done for you, making you laugh, licking your feet, eating your leftovers, and you don’t even have the courtesy to take me along for a ride to the supermarket? You are a meanie! See if I sleep at the foot of your bed tonight or roll my eyes sadly at you when you require emotional support.”

“Let me help you get the newspaper, mom. I want to run all the way up the driveway and see what the squirrels, chipmunks and raccoons are doing this morning. They need a good scare. The running will loosen my bowels, too, so I and pinch off a loaf on the way. Maybe I’ll mark some territory, too. Sounds like a good idea.”

“What the heck is that sound out back. I better BARK, BARK, BARK, BARK, BARK, BARK, BARK, even if I really don’t know what it is. If I bark loud enough, maybe it will know I’m here and run away, or come closer so I can bark even louder. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“Is that potato chips you’re crunching? Let me have some! I’ll sit here looking mournfully at you until you throw one into the air for me the catch in my mouth like a centerfielder for the Chicago Cubs. OOOPPPS, missed it. Let me lick it off the floor.”

“There, that’s clean. Now what’s next?”

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Appearance of Television

12/18/2016

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Sports Illustrated magazine runs a great weekly blurb titled, “The Apocalypse is Upon Us.” The paragraph is often a quote. Sometimes it’s an event. The section highlights a ludicrous activity or juxtaposes some statement or activity that is crazily abnormal with the reality of how we actually live in the world.

It’s worth a read if you don’t typically pick up the magazine. You’ll get a chuckle, raise your eyebrows, wonder if what they wrote is the truth because people are nuts, quite frankly.

We say and do things on a regular basis that put our world on the precipice. Then, the next week, we’re still here, having survived another onslaught of stupidity, ignorance and apathy.

Going through my notes the past few days, I came across a sign of the apocalypse upon us: “In 1992, the American Medical Association published a study that found the homicide doubles in almost any part of the world 15 years after television first appears there.” Hmmm…..

The study probably has holes and inconsistencies in it. And, quite frankly, I can’t Google it, so who knows where I came up with the information when I wrote that note to myself. Still…..

The stat doesn’t surprise me. Sometimes I marvel at the mayhem on the tube. I’ll watch previews for shows and within seconds view eight images of some form of violent act.

An action movie preview comes on, and you know how that goes. They ram us with as many quick images of things blowing up and people being shot as they can.

I guess that’s supposed to interest us. Or at least titillate our senses. But I think it starts doing the opposite. It numbs us to what we keep seeing. We distance ourselves more and more from real life violence through our exposure to so many cop, crime and action shows and movies.

Do homicides go up after the introduction of television to a culture? Probably.

But the problem is more insidious than that. If we watch a lot of violence as part of our personal fantasy worlds, unless you’re an extremely intelligent and able person who disassociates from that after turning off the TV, then you carry around in your head all shooting, stabbings, fist fights and blown up buildings.

It’s part of your reality. It doesn’t cause you to pick up a gun, but when you hear about gun violence it may not surprise you as much.

I remember years ago refereeing a junior varsity high school basketball game during the summer. After the game, I saw this tall guy in the hallway that I knew. I couldn’t remember where I met him. I thought maybe I’d caught up with him on the golf course.

As I got closer to him, he smiled, and I realized it was Jim Boeheim, the head men’s basketball coach at Syracuse University. I thought I knew him personally because I’d seen him on TV. But I didn’t know him. I just recognized his image.

It was a strange situation, but it also taught me how TV (and by extension, other media that hit you with images) makes you think you know, understand or recognize something when you really don’t. It’s your day to day interactions where you really learn the truth because you experience it first-hand.

We’re becoming more and more a second-hand world (and even a third-hand world as we take images and share on social media), relying on someone else’s images or views to formulate our own. That’s sad and scary.

Maybe if we get rid of all our TV’s the murder rate will go down. It’s worth a try.

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Out-of-Shape Olympics

12/11/2016

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Many years ago, we were at a family reunion in New Jersey at our aunt’s house. At some point, after adults had been imbibing, a friendly conversation ensued about speeds for the 100-yard dash and what each person had run for their best time in the past. Most of the people in the discussion were men in middle age or older. No one bragged, but one of the men had a bright idea.

“Let’s run the 7-yard dash. We have enough room to do it on the driveway,” he said. Genius.

Much excitement ensued. The party moved to the driveway. Men lined up at the starting line. Jockeying for position occurred, elbows thrust out, along with chattering, trash talking and chest pumping. Shortening the event opened up the possibility that anyone could win, even if you were over the hill.

I don’t remember who won. I do remember how funny it was, and have to imagine everyone who took part remembers it with a degree of humor. They may not remember a single other thing about that day, but ask about the “7-Yard Dash Olympics” and they’ll wax philosophic and probably crack a smile.

In the spirit of middle-aged out-of-shape people, shouldn’t we have some form of Olympic competitions for them? With humor and insight, we can establish a great program.

For example, for all the northerners, we can add the snowblowing or snow shoveling contest. Those who participate are giving a short driveway to clear in the snowblowing event or a even shorter front walkway or sidewalk to wipe empty for the snow shoveling contest. Sound the horn and watch the snow fly. Cheering would take a couple of minutes and the audience could then quickly go inside to sit around the fire or take a nap.

The yard mowing contest would be relatively simple as well. Set up a down and back route of 25 yards each way. Yank that starter and THEY’RE OFF! If the entrants tie in terms of speed, you can look for efficiency of their lines to see who the winner is: “Dilbert didn’t miss a blade of grass. Perfect rows. He’s the champion.”

My personal favorite is timing commercial breaks. Contestants are all given a TV remote control. Everyone is tuned to the same sports station. The goal of this event is to predict how long the commercial break will last without using a smart phone or timer.

Each competitor must turn to a different station (or stations) when the commercial begins and decide how long it will be before turning back to the show. The one who is closest to exact time that the commercials end is declared the winner. Bonus points are given if you tune back in at the exact moment the show goes live again.

Finally, we have the “Google It On Your Smart Phone In An Area Of Poor Coverage” contest. Most of us can relate to this frustration. You are given some bizarre fact and asked to verify its truth by Googling it. This contest must be held in the high hills of Pennsylvania or Maine, renowned centers of non-interactivity for cell service. You must be patient. You must decide whether to close down your browser and start over. You have to determine whether you miss-typed your entry or patiently wait while your phone hesitates. Such tension!

This Olympic events could be open to anyone. You could train or not. You could have some talent or not.

The fun part would be competing. Being able to say “I competed in the Middle-Aged Olympics” has a ring to it, doesn’t it?

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Fake News

12/4/2016

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Since Fake News has been in the news so much lately, it’s time to take on the beast. If you’ve been burrowed in a hole the past month or so, then you may not have heard about the multiple fake and false stories that played out during the presidential election show. Many of them surfaced on social media, with Facebook serving as a primary vehicle.

Facebook, for some reason, seems to be where some people get news. As a corruptive, manipulative, short-sighted news source, Facebook is probably just fine. If you want to live that way and distort your reality, go for it.

I figured out how bad Facebook was as the storm about Fake News gusted about us. If you use Facebook, you’ll see “news” stories off to the side. They often pertain to celebrities and frequently make outrageous claims that a sane person knows is either impossible or wrong. I typically ignore the posts.

As the news wars intensified, I started to glance at some of those news snippets. Three times I clicked on stories where the headlines seemed so weird and out of place to me that I couldn’t imagine the story was real. I don’t remember two of those stories because they were so wildly stupid, pointless and flat wrong.

The one that stood out to me was the one that said Clint Eastwood died. I’ve loved Eastwood as an actor and movie director, and the thought of him passing hit me. So I clicked on the link. I read the falsehood. Then I went to Google and checked the news and saw that Clint was still alive and kicking and that it was just one more example of Fake News getting attention.

People grab those stories because they WANT to believe them. The stories reinforce their prevailing view of the world or stimulate their senses. There’s a fascinating quote I read in the past few weeks (can’t take credit for it) that most people read or watch news to reinforce their beliefs rather than challenge themselves by looking and listening to a different perspective.

I think that syndrome is both what drives Fake News and at the root of much of our current cultural (political) divisiveness where people jump on a seemingly oddball bandwagon. We see the world a certain way and want to believe that’s the way it is, rather than acknowledging the world doesn’t always fit our view and it’s EACH OF US who has to adapt.

Most of us create personal fantasy worlds. We live in them throughout portions of every day. We escape through movies, books, music, sports, television, art, religion. That can help us cope with complicated daily issues and relax, but it doesn’t make the bigger stuff go away. It’s terrifying when sources start to create Fake News stories to add to our fantasy worlds, and the PEOPLE START TO BELIEVE those stories.

We’ve lost something when that happens. We lose the ability to discern what’s really happening vs. what we WANT to happen or WISH would happen or DREAM would happen.

Wishing won’t make it so. Nor will sharing a Fake News story and giving it wider distribution make it accurate or correct. It’s still wrong, false, distortive and manipulative. The sharing of these types of stories during the election news cycle was another sad statement about our willingness to examine the issues we face with a clear eye and open mind. Many people chose to send and share to fake out and influence their friends and followers.

None of us individually can stop the flow of Fake News. What we can do is maintain a discerning eye, listen, analyze, use our brains, think things through, hear out other perspectives. We’ll be better off if we’d consistently live that way.

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In the Eyes of a Dog

Appearance of Television

Out-of-Shape Olympics

Fake News

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