Tag: Camera Girl

A Pretty Good Deal

photog Current Events, Reclaiming the Family , , , ,

The holidays are upon us and today we got a taste of them.  A gathering of my children and their families at the Compound was deeply enjoyable.  The youngest grandchildren were triumphantly underfoot.  They had a game where they spaced out some pillows on the living room floor and hopped haphazardly between them to avoid the “lava” that surrounded these tiny islands of safety.  They were a menace to navigation and a real danger to themselves from collision with doors and walls and other solid objects.  So, they kept me busy refereeing their wilder excesses.

And Camera Girl outdid herself in the kitchen.  The food flowed impressively onto the table and then into the mouths of the delighted diners.  I give her all credit except for one decision that I was responsible for.  She had baked a huge Italian cheese cake and a chocolate cake and a chocolate pudding dessert.  Along with whipped cream she declared that no other dessert should be offered.  I insisted that vanilla ice cream must always be available as a component of dessert.  When the dessert was being served, I quizzed the kids about this and the reaction was electric.  They shouted agreement with my position.  Well, Camera Girl must have known in advance that I was right.  Not only did she have a half gallon of   vanilla.  She had chocolate chip and cookies and cream.  I was magnanimous in victory.  I openly applauded her willingness to accept advice and avoid disappointing the future of the family.

We talked about this and that.  Local politics and town affairs like the volunteer fire departments and their trials and tribulations.  And I talked to the kids about the upcoming Thanksgiving celebration here.  I mentioned that they would have the option of joining me in watching my traditional viewing of the 1930s versions of “The March of the Wooden Soldiers” and the Max Fleischer cartoon “Gulliver’s Travels.”  I also mentioned that there would be viewing of some of W.C. Fields’ classic movies, “It’s a Gift” and “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.”  I emphasized that they should take special note of the similarity in behavior of the wife in these movies toward her husband (Fields) to the way that Camera Girl abuses and disrespects me.  I think it’s never too early to use the classics to teach valuable lessons to children about how the world works.  I’m sure Camera Girl heard me making these statements because I detected a growling sound coming from the kitchen at this point.

Well, before we knew it the night was getting along and everyone had to get home to their own things.  After they left, I noted to Camera Girl that it isn’t such a bad world where such nice people can surround us with life and energy with only the cost of some peasant Southern Italian food and desserts needed as fuel.  Sure, the world is falling apart at the seams and Joe Biden is still causing damage everywhere you look.  But things could be much, much worse.  And at least we’ll get to do Thanksgiving and Christmas at least one more time before the world comes to an end.  That’s a pretty good deal.  I’ll take it.

It Couldn’t Hurt

photog Current Events, Trump , , ,

The unthinkable has occurred.  Camera Girl has joined the resistance.  Somehow, she’s discovered the 4B Movement.  I don’t know how it happened.  I keep her inside a hermetic bubble, into which no outside influence is allowed.  Like a Svengali I mold her every thought and gaslight her entire notion of what’s going on in the world.  But somehow, it’s happened.  She has declared herself part of the 4B; No barbecue, burger, brisket or bologna.  And as a further sign of her radicalized state of mind she’s added another 4B’s; no breakfast, bagel. bialy or bacon.  Shades of Lysistrata!

A complete food strike.  It’s diabolical.  And there’s nothing I can do.  I don’t know how to buy or cook food.  I’m not even sure what I currently eat.  The dishes she makes for me are complex and confusing.  If left to my own devices I’ll probably wander through the supermarket buying the easily identifiable items like bananas and seltzer.  It looks pretty bleak for me.  I tried to placate her.  I told her I’d stop watching YouTube videos of Kamala voters screaming and crying.  I told her I’d let her watch NCIS and other girly soap operas.  But she just ignored me.  Her tactic is to eat her meals before I get up in the morning.  When I get up at 10:30 am I can still smell the coffee and bagels wafting around the dining room but all that’s left is an empty coffee mug and some everything-bagel crumbs on a plate in the sink.

I can’t figure out where she’s hiding the food.  I suspect it might be in the kitchen cabinets but because of the illogical way she arranges things I’ve never been able to find anything but trash bags and window cleaner in those places, so what’s the use.  In desperation I’ve been sneaking out to the edge of the swamp looking for the crumbs and crusts that Camera Girl leaves at the edge of the water for Moe the Crow.  I’ll give him this, he puts up a pretty stiff fight for his food.  But I’m just too strong for him.  I will have to get there a little earlier though.  The bread gets very soggy from the ground water almost immediately.

I’m thinking of getting some outside help.  I’m going to write a letter to President-elect Trump and see if he has any advice for me.  I mean he’s always fighting with “nasty women” and he’s managed pretty well for himself.  Well, he did get sued by that harpy who claims he raped her in Bloomingdales.  And he is on his third marriage.  And he did have that Million-Woman March against him back in 2017.  But probably all of those experiences have made him wiser about women and anyway I feel he owes me after I stuck up for him with Camera Girl and all the other women who over the years have argued with me about what a terrible man he is.  Surely that wisdom can do me some good in my present predicament.  The “art of the deal” must have a chapter on food strikes.

Well, if all else fails. I will fall back on what every man has as his birthright; the male brain.  As Shakespeare very beautifully expressed it in Hamlet, “What a piece of work is a man, How noble in reason.”  That’s right, how noble in reason.  We are the thinking animal and we can think our way out of any crisis.  I will buy food myself and by trial and error I will figure out how to cook it.  I can write the equations for the heat transfer of an electrical resistance stove top.  I can figure out the amount of time it takes for a quart of water to reach its boiling point at a particular power setting.  I know how the proteins in animal muscle become denatured at high temperature.  Fire is the invention of some male ancestor of my species and I can master its application to any technology.  As Prometheus is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!

Maybe if I tell her how nice her hair looks lately, she’ll make me some coffee and a pumpernickel bagel.  It couldn’t hurt.

A Better Mousetrap

photog Current Events, Humor, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner , ,

Camera Girl is a courageous woman.  She will bravely rail against anyone who offends her sense of justice.  Unfortunately, she usually does this when it puts me in the firing line of whoever she is challenging or berating.  This can get a little dicey for me.

So, she has the heart of lioness, except when it comes to mice.  The poor girl is terrorized by the diminutive rodents.  Something about their tails fills her with horror.  And so, she wages a war of attrition against them in all the outposts of the Compound.  Specifically, the garage and the large shed that houses the yard equipment.  My own feeling is that areas outside of the house and its various attachments are outside of the jurisdiction of polite society and so a mouse or two more or less is not cause for alarm.  But she disagrees vehemently.  Part of the reason is that she has to go through the garage to bring the dogs to the fenced in areas she lets them out into at night.  And if the dogs sense that mice have been in the area, they become interested and this frightens her into thinking that one of Stuart Little’s relatives might make an appearance and trigger the dogs to catch and eat it.  For her this would be even worse than one running by her.

And so, she has taken to mining the garage and shed with mouse traps.  Interestingly, seeing a dead mouse in the snap trap is not frightening for her.  Once rendered inert, she discharges the traps at the edge of the pond and literally caws for Moe the Crow and Poe the Raven and their ancillary corvids to partake of the murine feast provided.  I find this to be one of her most eccentric rituals.

Anyway, a crisis has emerged.  A year or two ago we switched from the venerable wooden spring traps to a newfangled jaws-like version made of plastic.  She liked these better because they made it easier to release the dead mouse from the trap.  But recently these traps have begun failing.  Apparently, the mice were now able to extract the peanut butter that she baited the trap with, without the trap snapping.  She would come back from her trip to the shed, filled with a sense of dread and tell me this tale of woe.  The world turned upside down!

Because Camera Girl had never developed the knack for setting the older wooden traps I have, of course, been recruited to become the baiter of traps.  And also, I have been tasked with solving the mystery of the failed plastic traps.  And it has been implied that if I fail to diagnose the problem and correct it, I will have failed as a man, a husband, and an engineer.

O tempora, o mores!

So far, I have installed the wooden traps with the prescribed bait that was provided to me by Camera Girl.  That much have I done.  But I have only just begun to investigate a cause.  Could the traps be defective?  Could they have gotten rusty and thus less sensitive?  Might the peanut butter have become old and therefore easier to remove?

My mind has raced to encircle this mystery within a thicket of possible solutions.  But these are deep waters.  I cannot be too hasty.  A proper plan of attack is needed.  I’ll need a budget to purchase supplies, tools and instruments.  I’ll need a detailed schedule to properly scope the project and I’ll need a scapegoat in case the project is a failure.  Maybe one of the dogs.  Updates will follow but I felt this project was important enough to warrant an introductory post to benchmark the effort.

The single guys out there probably assume I’m suffering the beginnings of dementia.  The married men will probably understand that this is just one of the many accommodations a man makes to keep a wife happy.  And after all the expression, “Happy wife, happy wife,” Is not far from the truth.  But I do wish someone would invent a mousetrap with lasers.  It would make the who thing much more fun.

Update:

War Pig commented:

Mamaw used peanut butter in her traps as well, but when the diminutive rascals found out how to defeat that, she went to bacon grease. Mice, in Ohio at least, cannot resist bacon grease. Also the plastic traps tend to not give the same force as the wood-and-spring traps. A healthy mouse can get out of them and resist a broken neck due to their lack of dynage. Living on a farm meant constant vermin control. The little buggars aren’t stupid. We have to change out methods and baits from time to time. Thankfully, a generation of mice comes along a few times per year. So anything learned from the last generation is lost to the grandchildren.

Eureka

photog Current Events, Humor, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner , , ,

After yesterday’s epic whine about the vicissitudes of home ownership I looked around for some kind of salve for my male ego.  And fate or something provided me with the opportunity to redeem myself.  A clogged bathtub drain.  For the last few weeks, the drain in our tub has been getting slower and slower.  Lately I’ve left the plunger near the tub and after every shower I played a game of trying to get it to break loose.  All I achieved was to dredge up a goodly amount of black flakes that were some kind of fossilized soap scum.  And all that achieved was to waste ten or fifteen minutes while I cleaned up the tub of this disgusting residue.

But today I had had enough.  I gathered my equipment:

  • Screwdrivers … check
  • Needle nose pliers … check
  • Accordion Toilet Plunger with Large Bellows for Extra Powerful Plunge, Black … check
  • Snake auger … check
  • Electric drill … check
  • Safety glasses … check
  • Disposable rubber gloves … check

All that was left was to let Camera Girl see that I was preparing for battle and even though I would be expending tens of thousands of dollars to have someone competent repair my home, at least I was capable of saving the cost of a plumber to get my bathtub back in good operating condition.

I solemnly explained to her how I would be removing the plunger from the trip-lever stopper to properly auger the drain line.  I don’t think it would be possible for me to overstate the intensity of contempt her look communicated to me.  Well, that’s the problem with women.  They don’t understand or appreciate technical genius.

So, I removed the drain filter and tried pulling out hair with the pliers.  Nada.  Then just for old time’s sake I put six inches of water in the tub and tried the “Accordion Toilet Plunger with Large Bellows for Extra Powerful Plunge, Black.”  I pushed down on the stupid thing once and the tub drained in seconds.  And of course, Camera Girl walked in just as it emptied and gave me the same look.  She picked up the plunger and asked, “How much did you pay for this?”  I said, “ten bucks.”  “And this?” (pointing at the auger).  “Sixty dollars.”  She shook her head and walked away.  Women don’t understand about contingency planning.  Very short-sighted.

Well, as pathetic as my victory was, it has transformed my attitude.  We’re definitely on the upswing.  And after she took a shower, she readily admitted that a working bathtub drain is not a commodity to look down your nose at.  And there’s no telling what I might do next.

Who knows, maybe I’ll tell my builder to stop all work, figure what I owe him so far and take over the job myself.  I mean how long could it take me to shovel ten thousand pounds of gravel?  And how hard can it be to jack up a building off its foundation?  And who needs a truck to pour concrete anyway?  What was it Archimedes said?  “Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I’ll move the Earth.”  Well, some of my ancestors came from Sicily.  Maybe I’m related to Archimedes (at least by marriage!).  Well, baby steps.  I think I’ll shock Camera Girl and brew my own pot of coffee.  How hard could it be?

Camera Girl Grows Up

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner , ,

Camera Girl is acknowledged across the multi-verse as the worst dog trainer of all time.  Whereas children and grandchildren respond to and obey her enlightened methods of child rearing, her dogs on the other hand are completely wild.  This happens because she thinks dogs are perpetually infants.  And so, she coddles them and allows them to walk all over her and run amok.  Many years ago, we had our first German Shorthaired Pointer, Max.  He was a magnificent specimen of a very large GSP and I thought he was fairly well-behaved.  But one weekend I come home to find my youngest daughter standing on the couch because the dog had taken her socks while she was putting them on and was growling whenever someone came near them.

So, I went to get the socks from Max and he bit me.  I was shocked.  I asked Camera Girl, “When did this start?”  She looked sheepish and said since he’d started to mature, he had been getting aggressive.  I guess I’d been busy over the last six months and hadn’t spent any time training Max.  But now we were in a bad situation.  I didn’t want to lose the dog but I couldn’t have a large strong dog that might bite my kids.  So being a lunatic I put on a pair of cowhide gloves and winter coat and attacked Max.  I went for the socks and he went for me.  I grabbed him around the neck and threw him to the floor and pinned him.  Then I growled like a lunatic and bit him on the throat.  And I never had another bit of trouble from that dog again.  From that point on he worked for me.

Over the years Camera Girl has improved slightly.  But depending on the temperament of the dogs, she’s done anywhere from fairly well to really poor at training them.  Our latest pup is a female basset hound and she is feisty.  And she likes to chew on things, including me.  So, I started to follow Camera Girl when she was “training” Penny.  And of course, the dog was running the show.  She had this short legged chunky hound running around causing chaos and the only attempt at training was baby talk admonishments. So, I demanded that we get her straightened out.  Now luckily there have been great strides taken in dog training since my days of biting Max on the throat.

One training aid is a shock collar.  Well, actually it’s a combination buzzer/shocker.  Camera Girl is way too tender-hearted to shock the dogs.  But I’ve finally demanded that she start using the buzzer and use it consistently to get Penny to stop biting and jumping up.  This is actually also for her own good.  Basset hounds are very prone to hurting their backs and jumping up is a good way for them to do that.

And what do you know?  After about two weeks of consistent training the absurd puppy is finally, finally beginning to behave.  She hasn’t even tried to chew on my face once today.  And I’m overjoyed.  I think Camera Girl is finally beginning to grow up.  Any day now I’ll be comfortable enough to finally throw that ratty coat and gloves away once and for all.  And it’s a good thing.  I think next time the dog would win.

Emerging From the Cocoon

photog Current Events, Guns, OCF, Photography , , , ,

Just finished up a large and annoying project at work.  So, I’m celebrating a day of freedom with a big mug of coffee that Camera Girl made for me.  To paraphrase a line from a movie, “What did people do before they had coffee?”  Someone once told me that the American Century was fueled on coffee and cigarettes.  I could believe him.  Could the decline in American effectiveness in so many arenas be attributed to the decline in smoking?  It’s an interesting idea.

I’m looking out the window at the grass growing and the first butterflies of the year.  Unfortunately, I’m also seeing the first carpenter bees of the season.  For anyone lucky enough to not know what these are, they look like exceptionally large, aggressive bumble bees that burrow into wood (such as the outside of my house) and make a nest in which they lay their eggs.  Camera Girl was picking some dandelions that were in one of her raised gardens when a couple of these destructive bugs started to buzz around her.  I warned her away from the garden and promised to find out where they were burrowing and use lethal force to settle their hash.

May will be a very busy month both at home and work.  And that’s fine.  With the longer days and hopefully the warmer temperatures there will be more time to fix stuff and set things up around the grounds.  Today I was reminded of another piece of carpentry that has intruded on Camera Girl’s sense of how things should be.  And with the price of lumber and hardware reaching astronomical heights, what a wonderful time it is to be a homeowner.

The first hummingbird sightings have occurred and Camera Girl has put up her feeders.  I’ll try this year to do a better job with the 200-600mm lens to get some really good shots of them.  Yesterday I went out to get a few shots of the big elm tree that grows around here.  The leaves were bursting out of their buds and the tree has a very distinctive appearance that I wanted to capture.

Another drama playing out this spring is the epic battle between Camera Girl’s pet crow Moe and his arch-enemy Poe (a newly arrived raven).  She leaves scraps out for Moe in the morning but lately Poe shows up and snatches them.  Just now Camera Girl called me over to the living room window to witness Moe dive bombing Poe and forcing him away from the snack area.  Secretly I’m a fan of Poe.  I’ve always wanted a raven in the neighborhood and this seems like my big chance.  Maybe it’s my fate to become the man who made peace between Moe and Poe.  I mean can’t they all just get along sharing the chicken fat?  Nobel Peace Prize?  We’ll see.

 

I think it’s time for a photo expedition.  I’ll have to make a survey of what the local environment has to offer.  There are usually some antique car rallies and such things but I was hoping for something a little different.  What I think I’d like to get to is a gun show.  I know very little about guns but I think they could make a very good photo opportunity.  I’ve contacted one of the bigger shows to see if they have any qualms about photography.

Well anyway, we’ve finally put the last vestiges of winter behind us.  I saw a spring peeper stumbling around after I raked up some leaves and he staggered away into the woods looking like Mitch McConnell blinking in the lights of the photojournalists trying to confirm that he is indeed still breathing.

This weekend we’re going to a lecture on the latest word on beekeeping.  It’s been more than a decade since my last hive collapsed.  I’ve watched a few videos on the “natural” beekeeping method.  I stopped trying to keep them when the varroa mites devastated the whole industry back fifteen years or so.  I’ve toyed with the idea of catching a wild swarm on the theory that these bees have come into equilibrium with the various pests and will fare much better than the heavily “medicated” hives that exist on the edge of succumbing to the very insecticides used to beat back the mites.  I’ll ask this local expert what he thinks and who knows, maybe I’ll try my hand at beekeeping again.  Although I’ve been warned that between blueberries, raspberries and bees I’ll have every black bear in a fifty-mile radius lined up to clean me out.  Such is life.

Well in the immortal words of George Costanza, “You know, Spring! Rejuvenation, re-birth, everything’s blooming, all that crap!”

Of Civil War and Moe the Crow

photog Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner , , , ,

What a beautiful day.  It hit seventy with almost constant bright sun, almost no clouds and, for once, no wind.  Walking around the yard today was idyllic.  The daffodils were mostly open and everywhere the tree buds looked ready to burst.

Now the calendar says it’s the middle of April but in New England that translates to the beginning of Spring.  And based entirely on my subjective criteria I hereby declare today the first day of Spring 2024 in the photogian calendar!

 

A raven has taken to chasing off Camera Girl’s pet crows (Moe the Crow and his stooges) and eating all the scraps that she puts out for them every morning.  Now, I’ve been a fan of ravens ever since I read a book called Ravens in Winter many years ago.  And after camping in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, my admiration for them has increased.  Now that they have made their way to Compound, I am excited to have them around.  But I do feel bad for Camera Girl.  Moe has become a friend of hers.  When he sees her come to the water he comes down to the ground and she feeds him peanuts from the ground in front of her.  Ah, well.  Survival of the strongest.

Alright, enough of all that.  Had to get it out of my system.

I spent today catching up with some projects that had languished during my recent busy spurt.  I’ve got a contractor waiting on a contract and a check to repair the damage done by a 120-foot White Pine that flattened a part of the upper driveway fence.  A very sad story.  The highway crew cut the tree up on Friday and managed to cut the electric fence wire that keeps our canines from rampaging over the countryside.  The timing of the electric fence malfunction made it possible that it coincided with the earthquake.  But afterwards the physical evidence said, road crew.  I have so many enemies!

I saw some early reviews for the new picture “Civil War.”  The claim is that the movie isn’t just a hit piece against Trump.  I’d like to believe that but I don’t want to see it until it’s been reviewed by someone on the right side of the political divide.  I’ve been burned too often and refuse to pay to be insulted by Hollywood.  I’ve watched about ten reviews so I’m starting to believe it could just be a movie about how bad a civil war would be.  But the other factor that could keep me away is the heroes being journalists.  After all, how many good journalists have we seen in the last ten years or so?  One, two, maybe three?  Anyway, my research continues.  If anyone finds a right-wing movie review for it, please pass it along.

So, Sunday night I did surgery on my laptop.  The internal battery was dying so I had to figure out how to open the back on my computer and replace the battery without frying the system or cracking the motherboard.  As I mentioned a few days ago I bout my very own geek tool set and watched a few YouTube videos for similar (but not identical) laptop models and then bit the bullet and went in.

Everything went relatively easily until I attempted to pop the back off.  Most of it released but near one side of the hinge the damn thing was stuck.  Stuck good!  And this is just plastic so I was afraid if I put too much force on it the damn thing would crack apart.  So, I attempted to extend the pry bar deeper into the interior to give me better leverage but I was afraid that some internal component could be damaged and turn the whole computer into useless junk.  After what seemed like forever the stuck spot sprang open.  Afterwards I checked to see if I had broken anything.  I did find something that looked like part of a female coupling that broke loose.  I couldn’t find where it came from so I chalked it up to being one of those pesky “extra parts” that they put in complicate equipment and moved on.

Well, from there on everything went smoothly and the whole thing was back together in five minutes.  A few hours of charging and the thing was working flawlessly.  So now I am officially an IT worker.  I feel an irresistible urge to write a haiku in DOS.

There, I’ve gone about seven hundred and fifty words without mentioning the 2024 elections.  That feels pretty good.  I’m trying to figure out a good approach to write about the political situation strictly from a humorous perspective.  Since I have almost precisely zero practical effect on the outcome of the election, I feel that to entertain is the correct strategy.  But honestly, I’m still searching for the format and angle that pleases me creatively and would also provide enjoyment to the readers.  A work in progress.

So, I think I’ll go watch something fun.  Maybe Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes.  I like that movie.

Valentine’s Day 2024

photog Current Events, Reclaiming the Family ,

As you can tell from the photo above I consider myself and Camera Girl odd ducks.  But Valentine’s Day is a universal call to action.  Today of all days every red blooded American man has to prove to his girl that his undying love is worth slightly more than the cost of a box of chocolates, some flowers and a decent meal.  Play Don.

So Many Cookies

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner , , ,
Christmas Cooking, Sony A7 III, Sony 90mm f\2.8 macro lens

Camera Girl is like a food terrorist. She festoons treats around her kitchen like so many high-caloric land mines. And there I am blasted to bits over and over by all of these irresistible gastronomic pyrotechnics. I know how awful will be the penalties I’ll suffer when the holidays are over and how many hours of exercise will be needed to work off the hundreds of thousands of calories of delicious, delectable evil that she has surrounded me with. But eat I must. Over the course of almost five decades, she knows which foods I cannot resist. The cookies; grandma (or white), chocolate chip, oatmeal and the chocolate dipped coconut macaroons. The pies; apple, coconut custard, pumpkin, cherry and more. And that’s not even counting the ice creams and cheese cakes. And all of this will be after the sheer tonnage of lasagna, meatballs, sausage and filet mignon. Oh, the pain, the pain.
I rate my chance of surviving this onslaught as minimal. I reckon that if the EMTs arrive while I’m still breathing, they will advise her that as a purely practical triage decision they should leave me and move on to the next 911 call. At most they may spend a few moments berating me for allowing myself to come to this pathetic end.
But in all honesty, I acknowledge, that all things considered, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Gathering around the holiday tables groaning under the weight of Camera Girl’s bounteous feast is the highlight of every year. Enjoying delicious foods with family and spending time with the people closest to me in the whole world is well worth any bout of indigestion that might occur. Each of the rituals and ceremonies is a touchstone to the past. These same words and actions bring me back to the time when I was a child and eating these same foods and gathering together with family was the highlight of our holidays.
And to ensure that this tradition will continue, Camera Girl has her daughters and now her granddaughter over each year to knead the dough and shape the cookies that they bake for Christmas. And my son and sons-in-law and grandsons share in the expectation that these cookies will be there in the years to come. And I hope they do. Family traditions and gatherings may be the most important social functions in our human existence. They don’t fall under any government program and they aren’t mediated by any of the organs of modern life. TikTok and Meta don’t decide what’s the correct way to break bread with family and I doubt that the Kardashians or Taylor Swift even know what a grandma cookie tastes like, never mind know how to bake one.
So, whatever your traditions and whoever you gather with for Christmas, enjoy the time off away from the soul-deadening dictates of our woke institutions and brain-dead social media influencers. Use the time wisely to spend time with the people who actually mean something to you and enjoy that time together.
God bless us all, everyone.

Damn You Millan!

photog Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner , , ,

Little Evil Dog (LED) is now about four months old.  And still in the midst of a teething frenzy as her milk teeth are falling out.  Sometimes Camera Girl even bleeds from the bites of this insane little basset hound.  There has been some improvement.  Lately she only draws blood once a week rather than daily.  Everything is relative.

Today I noted that Camera Girl was watching the Dog Whisperer on Nat Geo.  It’s that Mexican guy Cesar Millan who trains dogs.  Of course, there is nothing more absurd than Camera Girl trying to train her dogs.  They completely dominate her and systematically ignore all her commands.  It would be accurate to say that they have trained her.

I tried to imagine her attempting to use Millan’s techniques but I know that she could never assert authority over the dogs.  It just completely clashes with her babying of these canines.  And yet with her children and grandchildren she has always been able to maintain good discipline.  I think it’s the fact that intellectually dogs are like permanent infants.  They never reach a point where they can be responsible for their misdeeds.  Training always has to be a matter of dominance.  And so, she forever treats them like babies.  Even if the animal outweighs her.

And so, the problem of Camera Girl’s bad dogs can never be fully solved.  I have in the past had to force obedience from some of the larger male dogs on my own just for safety’s sake but she will never be their boss.

But as I watched the episode that Camera Girl had on it occurred to me that a wife whisperer would be an interesting show.  If some guy developed a format where he had men come to him with wives who behaved poorly and he came up with a regimen for bringing them back in line.  And of course, it should be a humane program.  No shock collars or whips; nothing like that.  It could all be done using positive reinforcement.  Even a muzzle probably would be unnecessary, although I could see where it would make life better sometimes.

I’d guess it would work with treats and gifts used to encourage good behavior and verbal cues to point out bad behavior.  I started to think how I could work some of these things into my home life.  I could use small rewards like buying her a turtle or a lizard if she behaved herself.  But I realized that my house would probably overrun with pets within a few weeks.  And since there weren’t any other treats, I could provide or withhold, there wasn’t a way forward with my wife whisperer idea.  It was a dead end.

But I did watch how often food was the treat that Millan used to train his dogs.  How he used it to reinforce good behavior or withheld it to show displeasure.  And then some things came together in my mind.  Grocery patterns and other aspects of my life.  And I was aghast.  She has been using Millan’s program on me!  Tonight, we’re having a pork roast.  That only went on the menu after I performed the winter yard close-up yesterday.

To Serve Man, it’s a training book!