August 23, 2003 01:03 AM Rant # 6

I find myself in a state of comfortable numbness. It's like meditation, only not as calm and peaceful. It's like an El Nino of emotion. Warm, tropical climates of enjoying my life and job and just generally being content with where I am are coming in from the east and mixing with a cooler, wetter front of financial worry, pet anxiety and the mild malaise-de-la-tete that's common to all such introverts, to form a dull, bleak few months of emotional weather that is only remarkable and newsworthy because there don't happen to be any ex football players slashing throats or high profile BJs to take up the news time.

What I am about to rant about requires some background information. I do not like taking medication. The reason for this is not entirely clear to me. I have no problems swallowing pills and I used to take vitamins on a regular basis with no ill psychological effects. Part of the irrational distrust is that it is chemically altering what would otherwise be normal. While that wields, psychologically, the power of some very large bomb on me, it doesn't hold up when you take into consideration that I regularly enjoy both caffeine and alcohol, which rather drastically alter one's normal chemical state.

Another aspect has always been that I don't really trust medical science. Something can be great for you one year, then the next year you see commercials saying that if you've used this product and it's caused your left arm to fall off, call the law offices of Blah Blah and Blah Blah and be part of a class action suit. Added to that is the very rare occurrence, lately, of medicines with only a few side effects and those few being mild. Then you have to take medication for the side effects, which has still more side effects, which you need medication to counter. I don't know if it would be more fitting to compare it to Uruburos or to trying to balance a scale that's a bit too accurate and won't settle for anything but perfectly even. While I could go on like this for quite a while, I don't want to earn some kind of REPUTATION for bashing medical science. Raging against the machine is fun and all, but this particular machine puts food on the table and in the various food bowls strewn around the house.

I think part of this funk is from people. I have this thing with people, which means that I typically don't like them. Unless I know someone, I'd rather be left alone. There are rare occasions where this is not the case, which is usually when I get to know the people instead of automatically disliking them, but this usually only happens at work, where I think it's more of a survival reflex since I have to deal with these people for far too long every day, and under the influence. Every now and then, I might meet someone and not clam up, avert my eyes and just assume the worst. That seems to happen about once every Harvest Moon. I actually don't know how long it is between Harvest Moons, but I said it under the assumption that it's a long time.

Today, my unique medical condition of disliking people (easily fixed with a pill, so long as I don't mind a chronic case of the shits and possible liver damage) was aggravated by the forced exposure to an odd mixture of fellow introverts and insufferable extroverts. That's right, fellow dog owners. Half of them shunning other people and pouring love down on their animals, cause they're better than people anyway, and the other half getting a dog cause they just have that much love to give that people alone can hardly stem the flow and a buildup of perk is, of course, potentially lethal. People are weird with their dogs. I'm not a fan of people when they're acting normal. I think the
knowledge I was going to have to be cordial to these fellow freaks was enough to get a good funk started. I wouldn't have agreed to this if it wasn't a necessary evil.

Sam is a black lab, at about 50 pounds now and at least 20 or so more to go. A 70 pound dog rampaging around is not only potentially dangerous to everything in the house (including the house) but it would drive me and the wifey insane and also make me derelict in my responsibility to the dog. That doesn't mean I have to like it, though. Half of the dogs don't even need this kind of training. No one is going to run away if a Jack Russell Terrier is running at them, or wants to jump up. Oh no, do you see that Maltese in the pink sweater heading for us? Run! For a small breed, once it's done shitting in the house, it's fully trained. If you have some spare time and dislike people, teach it tricks. If you've got a dog that can toss grandma around like a rag doll, then yeah, invest some time and money into getting him trained. But hey, maybe Fluffy the poodle is just too unruly and has to be taught some manners. Who am I to judge?

You know, I SHOULD be the one to judge. THEN things would be different. But perhaps that's a rant for another time. I'm sure someone will say something about these not really being rants. Well, that guy can just suck one. Bitch.

Posted at 01:03 AM | Comments? (426)