What Do You Think Today?

[Avatar]

Haha, I'm always telling people that: "I'm not your role-model..."

--A

[Skyweir]

There are worse influences between heaven n earth ... a little poetic license ... and I tend to think everyone is somebody or somethings hero.

Giving kitties a good home is no small feat and many dont

[Avatar]

Haha, I'm just not willing to take responsibility for stuff.

--A

[Skyweir]

Dont you have two fur dependents?

And Sorus too

[Sorus]

I have 3, but they adopted me. And are definitely in charge around here.

[Skyweir]

Haha Av inherited his fur kitties too I think.

They may be in charge ... and if that, I have no doubt cuz cats right? Bossy little blighters

But you feed them, worm them, look after them. Of course they see you as their minions but tis a role you have accepted and fulfil

[Avatar]

3 actually. Always been a cat person, but never actually wanted any to keep...can't turn them away either though, so made my own bed...

--A

[Skyweir]

See kitty hero

[Sorus]

But you feed them, worm them, look after them. Of course they see you as their minions but tis a role you have accepted and fulfil

A nice thing about indoor kitties is that you seldom have to deal with worms. Or fleas, as they go hand-in-hand. Or would, if they had hands.

It's been about 5 years since I had to deal with a case of The Wums.

My regular vet wouldn't sell me a de-worming pill without an exam, and they couldn't give me an appointment until the following week. They didn't feel it was an urgent matter - fair enough - but the cat in question sleeps on my pillow, which ramped up the urgency level in my book.

So I took her to the shelter clinic, where we met a very nice vet tech who had a very heavy accent that I could not place. She looked over the paperwork and said 'Oooh, The Wums' which sounded very dramatic and theatrical and whatnot, but was probably just the way she always talked.

Anyway, Wums.

[Skyweir]

Yeah Im with you ... pillow wums nasty lol

[Avatar]

Mine just get a tablet at the same time they have their yearly shots.

Was Diwali this weekend, so cats very unhappy.

--A

[Sorus]

Fireworks and whatnot? Mine are pretty unflappable when it comes to such things, mostly thanks to the upstairs neighbors' awful plumbing. We had the Blue Angels (fighter jets doing their annual airshow) a couple of weeks ago, and I'd just get some annoyed side-eye when they buzzed the neighborhood. My ferals would hide in the shower.

[Avatar]

Yeah, fireworks. Especially my ginger. Same thing with thunder. He tries to bolt out to go and hide in a store room under the building's stairs. If I get to him in time, I put him in my study and he hides in my cupboard. Stays hidden for hours. Poor little guy.

--A

[Skyweir]

Oh poor little guy

What is a Diwali celebration in SA?

I didnt know so I googled it ...

https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/common/diwali

.... a Hindu celebration that goes for 5 days? Are there many Hindu in SA? Or is it completely different

[peter]

The Queen has apparently instructed her dresser not to buy her anything with fur trim or whatever on it, in a move intended to show support with the anti-fur lobby. Well at over ninety years of age it's a bit frikkin late in the day if you don't mind my saying. Better for it you had made the decision at the beginning of your reign rather than the end after everybody else was already on board (or at least everybody with a head on their shoulders who was ever going to listen to it anyway). Still, better late than never I guess.

The Express reports on a "DNA test at birth" that will help to save lives. Yea, right. How long before the data collected thereby find itself screened for genes indicative of a propensity toward particular illness, and that data finds it's way into the hands of say, prospective employers or insurance companies. Welcome to the Brave New World folks.

(Along the same lines I read the other day that introduction of facial recognition technology in the UK moves on apace with the disclosure that the private company that runs the concourse outside King's Cross terminal in London has for a time been screening all people who cross it or enter/leave the station for this purpose. That's a shit load of people. Why I ask? When questioned as to this the company apparently fell back on the rather lame excuse of "helping us to better serve our customers" adding, "besides - monitoring technology is used routinely across many areas of our society now and this is simply a natural extension of the same as new methods are developed". )

[Avatar]

.... a Hindu celebration that goes for 5 days? Are there many Hindu in SA? Or is it completely different

Same thing...many is relative, about 2.5% of the population is of Indian origin, and a fair proportion of those identify as Hindu.

It doesn't carry on for 5 days, but a lot of Indian families honour the Festival of Lights with Fireworks on at least the main feast day or whatever.

Depending on where you live, it can be a noisy evening / weekend.

..."besides - monitoring technology is used routinely across many areas of our society now and this is simply a natural extension of the same as new methods are developed". )

Usually I would advocate CV Dazzle here, but saw this recently: https://mymodernmet.com/ewa-nowak-avoid ... cognition/



--A

[peter]

My great great grandfather was the owner/operator of a coastal vessel that plied it's trade shipping goods around the coast of the UK. By means of vessels such as his goods were distributed around the UK from their places of production to where they were required or where they would be sold. On his last voyage he unwisely overloaded his boat with grain and set out in seas that were somewhat rougher than he should have been sailing in, given the depth at which the boat was sitting in the water. On board with him were his wife and four children.

Sufficiently far out to be beyond reach of the shore, but still in the shallow waters that pertained in the region (the Great Yarmouth area I believe, but am not absolutely sure) the swell began to wash over the sides of the vessel and pour down into the holds with the grain. The inevitable disaster happened and the boat sunk, taking the lives of my great great grandfather, his wife and two of the children. The two remaining children, of whom my great grandfather was one, survived by climbing up the mast and clinging on to this thin support until rescued some while later. The two children, my great grandfather who was eight and his sister, ten, were taken to the local town nearest to where the vessel had sunk and put to bed for the night. The following day they stood before the hastily assembled officials at a public inquest during which they were questioned as to the events of the previous day.

An account of the hearing, given in a local newspaper of the day and which I have read, told quite matter of factly how the children were questioned, seeming to have no particular problem with the trauma that they must have been - and indeed were still - going through. Still, those were the days when life was progressively cheaper the lower down the social scale you dropped, and tragedies of the kind that the children suffered were no doubt, if not commonplace, then more frequent and less demanding of sympathy than they might be today. Margret Thatcher famously urged a "return to Victorian values", but for my part I believe they are best left in the past where they belong.

[Avatar]

Largely agree, although I suspect that upper class children's "trauma" would have probably been given similarly short shrift at the time.

Wasn't really a recognised thing, was it?

--A

[Skyweir]

Are Victorian values stiff upper lip values? Is that the crux of her meaning?

Its interesting as I have some sympathy with the notion ... today we in the West seem to have become less resilient and possibly more fragile.

When I was on the road ... we were at the coal face of social and human tragedies if you will. Some coped well, some did not. There was no mandatory debriefing in the 80s and you just got on with it.

I think its highly valuable to cater for the mental health and wellbeing of humans but wonder if we have not yet got the balance right

[peter]

Agreed Av - you're right. The suffering of children wasn't given much thought right across the board in those days.