Rishi 1993-2004

Rishi 1993-2004
	Rishi was a partial siamese black male who loved people as much as people loved him. It's unusual for a cat to be so warm and affectionate as Rishi, but it was what made him special. No one looks forward to losing their pet.

There is always some pain involved no matter your relationship with animals but it seems to be more excruciating for a couple who have no children, no family living with them, who as a result come to treat their animals like children. In our case, species was irrelevant with Rishi. He was a member of our family and someone we loved and we lost him to an illness.

If you can sense the pain in this writing that is my goal. But realize that what I feel and what I can convey is only a portion of what my wife feels, the person who discovered Rishi, she was his original parent, the one person Rishi had known all of his life and she a third of hers. They spent ten years together in a symbiotic relationship that I can only hope to understand. I only came to know the joy of Rishi in the last seven years when I met her. My loss is only partial of my wife's grief yet what I still feel is still enormous.

I started writing this minutes after receiving a vetinarian diagnosis dictated to me by my wife over the phone in her wavering and trembling voice as she tells me why a love of her life does not have much time left in this world. I will only publish this when Rishi passes from us.

Rishi had a growth in his mouth resembling a tumor. The biopsy revealed it was Squamous Carcenoma (Cancer) and his prognosis was he could live a year and a half with surgery which would involve removing a portion of his jaw or less than three months without the procedure. That prognosis gave us two options that we were not happy about choosing for Rishi. But a decision had to be made for his sake and comfort of living and we decided not to take him anywhere but home. We tried mild treatments, a medication called Piroxicam that is designed to stunt the growth of the tumor, but not erase it. The hope was to try and slow it down prolonging his life. It was easy for us to administer and more importantly, Rishi did not have to leave his home and family.

Despite the treatments, his condition worsened rapidly through the month of April and just 29 short days after his diagnosis, Rishi left us. He went peacefully and purring to his last breath and we will miss our little black buddy.

Rest in peace Rishi. We love you.

This entry was posted at the minute of Rishi's passing so that we shall always remember.

Logorrhea

Logorrhea

I'm not sure if it's because the day before I fly out for vacation or it's just one of those days, but I've got a few things on my mind that I'm going to ramble about.

Anecdote

Yesterday at the oil change place, they tried to run me over with my own car. The guy tried starting the engine, he didn't realize it was a stick, killed the engine but my Jeep kept rolling. The check out line at the cash out spot extends in front of the oil change bay so I had to quickly step aside to avoid getting hit. The guy who did it, after getting my Jeep to finally stop, got out and laid down on the concrete floor. He was freaked out so it was pretty funny to me.

Political Mumbo Jumbo

I had a discussion with a guy at work today. I won't post the conversation, it's way too long besides I've already said most of what I said today in this blog at some point. I would like to say something (controversial) that I think I'll add to my list of personal quotes.

A flag burner is more patriotic than those that want to ban his actions.

That's it. People have the wrong idea about what patriotism is. It isn't blindly serving your President or his agenda. It's quite the opposite. It's questioning those that represent us, holding them to their actions relentlessly because their actions become our actions. The government works for us, it's not the other way around and people keep forgetting that. Patriotism is something the founding fathers wanted but banning flag burning or any other expression is a restriction of freedom of speech, the first right granted to us in this country's Constitution.

I just remembered, I already have a similar quote. Oh well. A great mind thinks alike.

In The News

To stop the renewed fighting in Fallujah, our military has sent in a former Republican Guard General, a Saddam Baathist with a security force to calm the city. Uh. Who's in charge here? Didn't we go there to overthrow this regime and said till we were blue in the face, Saddam is not coming back? What kind of signal do you think this sends?

Bragging Rights

I got a Google email account before the service has even been widely released to the rest of the Internet public. Blogger users can sign up for one while the program is in beta and I got the account name I wanted, a name I can never get anywhere because it and 500 mutant variations like it already existed. Oh happy day.

Funny Weird

I just ran a spell check on my entry here using the Blogger spell check tool and it did not recognize the word 'blog.' The suggestions for replacement are: Bloch (What's a Bloch as a proper noun?), blows, bloke, blocs, block, bloc, bolos, bloc's, blouse, and blocky. How does a premier blogging site not have an entry in its spell checker tool for the very service they're offering? That's like the dictionary missing the words 'reference' or 'book.'

Ha, it suggested 'flogging' as a replacement for 'blogging.' Sometimes I feel like I'm flogging when I write.

Eye Of The Beholder

Eye Of The Beholder

What is beauty? I don't have the answer. It's a question that's supposed to make you think. Following are two photos of the same person:

Photo #1

Photo #2

The first one is the subject at a much younger age and since society tends to prefer the younger over the older, which do you think is the more attractive look? Maybe neither one? Are attractiveness and beauty the same thing? Attraction is a part of desire which is definitely a part of our samsara.

By the way, recognize the eyes?

Out Like A Lamb, In Like a Goat

Out Like A Lamb, In Like a Goat

Hey, how's it going? Me? Not bad. Just getting ready this week to fly out to Colorado and visit my brother and family. My brother just returned from serving a year somewhere in Iraq as a medic. His family is glad to have him back and I'm going to go out and visit him for a few days. I leave on Saturday.

I'll try to get on and update the site here. Colorado is one of the more attractive states so I'm hoping to have pictures to share but it depends on the type of connection my brother has. I may not even be able to make text-only updates. We'll see. Nice talking to ya.

Olsen Twins Cost Me $600 This Week

Olsen Twins Cost Me $600 This Week

That's right. The cutey twosome from Full House fame has shaken the world financial markets by filing lawsuit against the company that I have stock in for breach of contract. The price is plunging, down 20% in two days, and I'm out $600 if I sell now.

Ok maybe the whole market isn't paying attention, maybe not the whole U.S. market and maybe not even the whole video game industry is either but Acclaim shareholders are sitting up. The twins don't look so adorable now.

Ronald McDonald Is Spinning In His Clown Grave

Ronald McDonald Is Spinning In His Clown Grave



I got a hold of what looks like an official business site that produces large display banners for the McDonald's restaurant chain (thank McMike for the link) and had a little fun with what I wouldn't mind seeing actually displayed on one/all of their establishments.

I sent Mrs. Lock the link since she is a former employee of the fast food giant and she actully made most of these. Only the McRibbed one is mine.



We actually like the Big 'N Tasty. It's just a catchy title.



Sure it'd be easy to Photoshop these without the website, but since these are actual banners that you can purchase and have mass produced, I'd like to think our creative input is showing up in some webserver log either driving a webmaster red with rage, pink with laughter or the more likely scenario bored to death because we're not doing anything he hasn't seen a thousand times.



I'm hoping the parody provision of the copyright laws lets me get away with displaying these. We shall see.

Republican, Democrat, Sophomoric

Republican, Democrat, Sophomoric
	I had this huge essay written out on the topic I'm about to mention, but then it occurred to me that I may not know what I'm talking about, especially on this particular subject so

I chucked it all and am going to start over keeping K.I.S.S in mind. I didn't mean for the original draft to be long but I kept thinking of things I wanted to say and before I knew it, I created a monster. More isn't always better.

So, here is the very abridged version.

It seems to me the two major political parties in the United States contradict their own policies. The Republican party supports a smaller government but since this is the party the religious right in this country mainly aligns itself with, they also want to tell us how to live our lives, that whole family values thing. Make abortion, gay marriage and flag burning illegal (constitutional amendments no less!), while keeping school prayer and the whole pledge of allegiance legal, in some cases even mandatory.

The Democratic party wants a big government, more taxes for social programs to support group rights over individual rights, yet they are socially liberal which means they don't want to tell us how to live - just freedom from the governments nosiness and a dip into the tax payer's nickel to possibly improve the life of the guys who don't have a nickel. But you can't have a big government and not have that beast tempted to turn the state into a dictatorship. Ronald Reagan said, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take it all away."

So I can't pick a party even if I wanted to. They're confused and don't know what they want. I am socially liberal and politically conservative. What party is that? The Republicrats? Demolicans? Actually, I think that means I'm approaching anarchy.

Yes, that was the short version.

Pandora Tomorrow On The Brain

Pandora Tomorrow On The Brain
	I know I've been playing too much Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow on the Xbox. I know this because at work this morning I was walking down the hallway to the cafeteria to get some water, when I noticed the fire extinguisher hanging on the wall. I got the urge to shoot it and watch it spray hoping to hit a nearby mercenary to smear his mask and blind him.

Importance Of The Separation Of Church And State

Importance Of The Separation Of Church And State

This is why the combination of church and state can be disastrous.

Friday, 15 March, 2002 BBC News
Saudi Arabia's religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress, according to Saudi newspapers.

If you think, 'Well that was Islam, that would never happen in a Christian government', try and remember your history and read up on the puritans or a little thing called the Crusades.

Thoughts On Kill Bill: Vol. 2

Thoughts On Kill Bill: Vol. 2

This is in no way a review. I can't do reviews because I either don't study the film as hard as a reviewer might during the showing or I can't express into words what I really thought of it. But there are a few things I'd like to say about it.

First off, Vol. 2 is very unlike Vol. 1. For me this works. Some will not like Vol. 2 because they were expecting Vol. 1. Vol. 1 is full of action and teases with background. Volume 2 is reverse, it is a lot of background, a lot of dialog and little action. It is its own story and I enjoyed it as such.

Vol. 2 is different because both titles were filmed together and then split into two. I'm willing to bet if the two are watched together, the viewer would sense the formula these two titles originally represented as one entity and then appreciate the whole series. But even as separate flicks viewed months a part, I still think Vol. 2 is a great story.

Tarantino has recently (probably due to the success of the first two) talked about making a Vol. 3. There is a particular thread in the movie that he could develop that would turn the tables on the Bride (Uma's character) and she would be on the receiving end of someone else's revenge run (isn't there a word for this?).

If you haven't noticed, the main fighters in the movies are mostly female. If you don't count the Crazy 88s who were just grunts working for O-Ren Ishii, Taratino has put a twist into the Kung Fu genre by dominating the stories with literal femme fatales. It just makes an already interesting story even more interesting. The Bride gets to show her soft side in Vol. 2 which is in contrast to the rampage she's be on through the two movies. Just another interesting twist.

In the fictional Dune novels (particuarly God Emperor of Dune, book 4) written by Frank Herbert, he theorizes that women would make better warriors, being deliverers of life and having an appreciation of it that a man could not. The theory goes on to say that women would be more motivated to defend their own and their country but with men, the concentration is just on destruction with no consideration for the preservation of any life. Men would fight because they feel the need to do, in a blind rage and not really in defense of anything, because they feel compelled to and women fight out of self defense.

It also points out that women are better equipped psychologically to deal with post-war life than men because when the war ends, a female soldier could return home, disable the rage required for warfare and not turn violently on the population (family and friends) with no enemy left to fight. Since it's in a man's nature to fight, it's not so easy to turn it off in any environment.

It's an interesting theory and one that sounds logical to me which is why I can accept and actually enjoy the many female warriors in the Kill Bill series.

Here's my review: They're great movies. A+. 2 thumbs up. A must see. Don't miss it. One in the hand is worth two in the bush or something.