Border Wars

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4

War Kitten, Armed and Ballistic
2008-04-23 09:15:00
And now for an important message from the galactic empire:.I love the concept of "war kittens." I mean, just sit and think about it for a while. W-a-r K-i-t-t-e-n-s. Ahhhhh.And on this middle of the week Wednesday, the hump day, the I don't want to get any work done day, what could be more fun than thinking about armed and ballistic kittens? Well, getting to be one, of course. You aren't going to get any work done after you play this awesome and addicting war kitten flash game:Cat with Bow GolfYes, that's right, you are the deadly ballistic kitten, armed with (and tied to) your Rambo bow of death, unleashed on a gravity challenged 18 hole golf course. Loose your arrow and watch as the kitteh is flung across the screen in tow. Cat lovers will relish the notion of a well armed cat militia, and us cat haters can glory in the quasi-mock-torture of watching a cat being flung around the screen behind a speeding arrow.I dare you to beat my all time best score of -50.Some tips:- Many hol...
More About: Kitten , Ballistic , Armed

American Idolatry
2008-04-13 22:21:00
If you consider "America" to mean twelve year old girls who can text message on a cell phone faster than you can type on a keyboard and who can hit a high C sharp when they wail like banshees, then American Idol is a fitting name for the show.Such mindless, conformist, shallow teeny boppers are prone to idol worship and if it weren't for 10 year old boys, pedophiles who like them a little old, and their immense spending power, no one would care what 12 year old girls think.American Idol has not gone away any more than obnoxious 12 year old girls will go away, and as long as they possess the power to make the cheeze fest that was Titanic the #1 selling movie of all time and shows like High School Musical one of the highest rated, those of us who deplore just about everything regarding 12 year old girls will have to suffer the tyranny of their fiscal superiority.But who am I kidding? American Idol isn't designed to find the best singers or even those likely to be the most successful...

Border Collie Who? Are You?
2008-04-02 11:18:00
The people at Dogster have no clue about Border Collie s.In one of those "answer some questions about yourself and we'll tell you what cliché you are (replete with photo and code so you can advertise our website for us on your page)" quizzes, they decided that the Border Collie s of the human world are: Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Martha Stewart, and Barbara Walters.GAG! Not a single one of those people says Border Collie to me.Bill Gates is super smart and a workaholic, certainly Border Collie traits. But he's awkward, anti-social, and a nerd. While Border Collies will certainly turn down playing with other dogs at the dog park should you present them with the "job" of playing fetch, they're hardly anti-social. Nor are they in any way awkward or weak or nerdy.Bill Gates made his fame by riding one idea that he stole all the way to the top, helped out at the start with a million dollars from Mommie. Gates' company became the de facto standard, but few people think it works very wel...

Out of 100
2008-03-24 08:30:00
70% of Americans don't know that Plastic is made from Oil. Stupid hippies; No Wars, No Oil.76% of American adults believe that Jesus rose from the dead. And then disappeared for 2,000 years? What's the point of rising from the dead if you just ascend to Heaven anyway? Isn't that kind of like, well, being dead?8% of Americans think Elvis is still alive and 11% are not sure. Why does it matter if he's not making music or terrible movies?11% of Women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime IF THEY LIVE TO 85! This is only if you live past the life expectancy of 79 and your breasts have lost much of their appeal. Look, you don't even pass a 1% risk until your mid 40s:Breast Cancer Risk in women by AgeBy age 30: 1 in 2,525By age 35: 1 in 622By age 40: 1 in 217By age 50: 1 in 50By age 60: 1 in 24By age 70: 1 in 14By age 85: 1 in 9So stop bitching you noisy feminists, there's no epidemic and your diseases aren't under funded, they are comparatively over-funded. Be grateful.49% ...

On "Hallelujah"
2008-03-24 08:07:00
For the first post in the "Texutal Analysis 101" series, I'd like to start with a song that is particularly vulnerable to shallow and hasty interpretations. The ironic and jaded lament for a lost and broken love, Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah .The casual reader might want to listen to the song by playing the embedded video, enjoy it, and move on. But if you'd like to delve into the lyrics, their allusions, and the deeper themes of the song, please, enjoy the rest and feel free to disagree and tell me about it.Despite the tortured and dark themes in the lyrics, the hauntingly beautiful melody and religious references of Hallelujah fool many people into believing that the song is a spiritual paean the likes of which you'd play at a wedding. I'd recommend adding it to your playlist of "Songs To Breakup By" instead. It's a weary, disillusioned, aching song; the passion is pain, the faith supplanted by remorse. The repeated "hallelujahs" are not reverent and sincere, they are ironic an...

Pat is Wrong, Wright is Evil
2008-03-21 17:05:00
Patrick Burns over on Terrierman has been on a several month long Obamathon, writing more often and more passionately about politics than about dogs.His response to the racist Reverend Wright scandal is to give us a self-admitted "lazy" lecture on what Jeremiads are, noting that Wright's first name is Jeremiah. Deep insight there.The name-as-destiny angle is pretty weak, especially since Patrick reminded us that Obama's middle name of Hussein isn't evidence of his deceitfully rumored crypto-Muslim status. If anything, our 'Christian' names make for more irony than destiny. After all, Patrick is from the Latin for "aristocrat," and Mr. Burns is a penny pinching advocate for all things working class. Christopher is Greek for "bearer of Christ" and I don't believe in the divinity of Jesus and never have. Go figure.So if name-as-desinty is just a cute starting point, what's the conclusion of Patrick's lesson? Don't look at the Big Black Bigot in the room, blame White churches, ...
More About: Evil , Wrong

Pacifist Hypocrite Shopping List
2008-03-20 07:50:00
I was out running some errands today and there were a handful of protesters at a busy intersection waving home-made signs like "honk for peace" and "no war for oil." I laugh at the naieve banality of such idealists. First, that waving signs makes any difference, and second the sheer amount of hypocrisy it takes to bring about such a half-assed roadside protest.Every component of that sign is made from oil. The foam core, the plastic handle, the paints, the glues: all petroleum based products. The price of any one of those doubles and you won't see too many out of work "students" waving those signs.The fact that the protesters' umbrella awning was made from oil, their ice chest was made from oil, the ice in the ice chest was created using refrigerants made from oil, the plastic bottles holding the water in the ice chest were made from oil, and all the filters, hoses, gaskets, and pumps required to get the water into the bottles are made from oil.But the hypocrisy doesn't end there...
More About: Shopping , List , Hypocrite

Poison Prevention
2008-03-18 02:47:00
The third week in March (funny timing, this, considering all the people getting bombed today for St. Patty's) is Poison Prevention Week. This is for humans, and animals alike.Since my dogs always find a way to be topical (today is Dublin's adoption day after all), little three-month-old Mercury decided to remind me last week about the upcoming Poison Prevention week by sticking his nose in the mop bucket and getting Pine Sol smell on his muzzle.The second he came up and gave me a wet kiss on the face I was momentarily transported to a high mountain meadow on a crisp spring morning, a meadow that had been polluted by toxic nasty smelling waste. I am not fond of strong smells, especially artificial fragrances. Pine Sol is among the worst of them.So I immediately freaked out, ran Merc into the bathroom and washed off his muzzle, then stuck my nose deep down his throat and tried to smell if he had ingested any of it. Signs were good, but I called my local 24/7 Vet clinic anyway, sinc...

Ultimate Dog Lover
2008-03-16 10:55:00
Gina at Pet Connection has been hard at work on her next book, The Ultimate Dog Lover , along with two other books on lesser animals. The publishers have graciously opened the pages of the book to submissions of prose and photos from the masses.Seeing that I'm right in the middle of a crusade against corruption, I'm really in the wrong state of mind to write something feel-good and uplifting for inclusion in the book; although if my efforts and the efforts of those I'm working for and with are successful, more than 30 people will have a chance at rebuilding their lives. If that day comes, it sure will be uplifting and feel-good, but the road there involves a lot of hard work, legal strategy, and a good dose of luck.So I submitted a few photos instead.I've had a lot of luck with photo contests, winning the John Fielder out door photography contest with a photo I took of Red Rocks, Colorado and First Place Architectural and Best In Show in a national competition for an image I took...

Off The Mark
2008-03-10 09:00:00
I was in court all last week fighting the good fight and I'll be there again this week. Think Erin Brockovich, only I'm brunette, a man, and my breasts are slightly smaller. And the crime at hand is securities fraud instead of hexavalent chromium poisoning. Since my mind bullets are currently being used to fight non-dog-related injustice and I'm off the job, I'll tide you over with some choice dog comics from Off The Mark by Mark Parisi:
More About: The Mark

Help me find a blog
2008-03-02 04:48:00
Dear Readers,I need your assistance in finding a blog. It's a blog that I've been to before and for some reason I can't find it now.There's some sort of dog blog campaign to bring a missing dog home (I think), and the supporters of the cause take a picture of their dog (or it could be the missing dog) and put an army helmet on the dog's head.I distinctly remember a very handsome malamute or husky with the helmet on his head on the right side margin of a blog I was at recently. Dark blue background.I'm sure one of you must know what I'm talking about. I only wish I read more about it at the time, but now I'm left without any specifics to google and I've gone through my blogroll and can't seem to find the image again.Please help.
More About: Blog , Find

Textual Analysis 101
2008-03-01 21:28:00
When was the last time you carefully listened to the lyrics of your favorite song and asked what was really happening? Too often we are swept away by the melody and the words are just embellishments as this NSFW R-rated, but funny, ad demonstrates:.Was high school composition the last time you analyzed a piece of literature line by line? Do you remember the feeling when you heard or read a line and understood exactly what the allusions and references meant and that knowledge elevated your appreciation for the source material to a higher level and made you feel like you were "in" on something special?You don't have to be exhaustively well read or a collector of Cliff's Notes to find enrichment by delving a bit deeper into a "text." And when the text is more approachable, more immediately relevant to your interests, the analysis is nowhere near as tedious as you might remember from English class.Textual analysis is like a treasure hunt or a criminal investigation, putting together t...
More About: Analysis

The 8 Signs of Groupthink
2008-02-27 10:50:00
Groupthink is an endemic problem of groups and bureaucracies charged with making decisions when the decision makers use peer pressure to limit debate, enforce an often false consensus, and avoid conflict.Groupthink is similar to other forms of social influence and etiquette such as Political Correctness in that one element of groupthink is the suppression of options, ideas, and viewpoints that are outside of the status quo or the comfort zone of a subset of the decision makers.Groupthink is used in hierarchical groups to preserve the power and prestige of the leadership who view underlings with suspicion and challenges to their ideas as attacks on their authority.Groupthink is also common in groups of true peers where individuals will avoid conflict or expressing a diversity of ideas to avoid giving offense, being seen as foolish or outlandish, or avoid sticking out or making waves.Groupthink results in suboptimal decisions as only a limited set of options are considered and debate ...
More About: Signs , Groupthink

Killing for a Myth
2008-02-26 07:36:00
In my recent correspondence with a pet rescuer who has yet to embrace No-Kill, I saw firsthand the phenomenon that Nathan Winograd discusses in Redemption: that we hear so much about pet overpopulation, but has anyone seen it?The e-mailer wrote: [Shelters] only kill the animals because THERE ARE TOO MANY! Hello? Have you heard of the overpopulation problem?Why yes, I've heard of it quite a lot. I've also heard extensively about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. If the modus operandi of the shelters in this country were to throw dogs off cliffs because the Easter Bunny commanded it, there'd be an uproar. If you had to trade Santa Claus a euthanized shelter dog for each present, the tragedy of "Christmas Puppies" would have a much darker and more sinister outcome.I've heard a lot about "pet overpopulation," but I've never seen a feral dog colony or a single dog starving in the street. I've never seen a dog abandoned at the dog park. Every loose and stray dog that I've picked up...
More About: Myth , Killing

Parroting PeTA
2008-02-23 06:29:00
Here's an e-mail I got today from a horse and dog rescuer (Help A Horse Organization) who is rather miffed at my "Buy From a Breeder" rhetoric. I think she missed the point. She also failed to appreciate the elements of my post that were sarcastic and parroting the PeTA rhetoric, despite my caveat at the end of the post; this is perhaps because she is a parrot for PeTA herself.The sad thing about Parrots is that they sound like they are rational and intelligent, but they have no idea what they're really saying since they don't have to think about it. They just mimic. That's the beauty of mantras and why they are so popular by groups that control and influence the masses (religions, political parties, governments, advertisers, schools, social clubs, militias, guilds, unions, etc.): they are easy to repeat and require little or no thought.I haven't been to a church service in years, but I can still recite almost the entire mass. And really, when you're saying the Pledge of Alleg...
More About: Peta

Hatred for Winograd
2008-02-19 08:01:00
An unintended occurance of a visual double negative. When paradigms shift and the new guard replaces the old guard there is generally a lot of spitting and cursing and ill will, especially from adherents to the previous school of thought as well as from the other contenders to the throne.Such a shift is currently taking place in our nation's shelter system and the heir apparent is the No-Kill movement. The shift in thought is a major one, and the expectations of performance in the new school are high. Such radical departures in thought, practice, and benchmarks of success are not easy to swallow and do not happen overnight.In truth, it might take an entire generation for the "kill to be kind" school of thought and its adherents to vanish from the shelter business. With well funded radical idiots like PeTA killing animals for fun and profit and wayward zealots still preaching the old testament commandments of mass slaughter to fight back the supposed plague of animals, banal tempera...
More About: Hatred

We Feel Fine
2008-02-16 02:53:00
I just got a click through from a rather strange looking address, www.wefeelfine.org, and I thought I'd investigate. It turns out that it's a rather fascinating project (with a Stanford Connection) in human emotion using the Internet as a giant herd of guinea pigs.We Feel Fine is an exploration of human emotion on a global scale. Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be ...

Memes about Me
2008-02-15 08:34:00
I rarely participate in chain letters (and I do recall getting one or two physical letters before the internet was popular) or mass e-mails and the like (they still arrive in my in box on a daily basis), and I usually avoid the temptation to conform to the popular meme-of-the-day.But some of them are fun and serve a purpose. So here are my answers to the two recent Meme games I've been invited to. First up, 4 THINGS Meme:N.B. Being the nonconformist that I am, I choose to ignore the limitation or suggestion of only 4 answers to each prompt.Some Jobs I have had in my life: Marketing Consultant for Electronic Arts, Founder of a highly successful treasure hunting forum, President of the Colorado Junior Classical League, Technical Consultant for a major Lawfirm, Real Estate Agent, Student Representative to the CO State Senate Subcommittee on Gifted and Talented Education, Financial Manager of La Casa Italiana at Stanford University, Alumni Co-Chair of the Youth Advisory Board of the Y...
More About: Memes

Happy Valentine's Day
2008-02-14 16:58:00
Happy St. Valentine's Day from Gemma, Mercury, Bella, Zeke, Maximus, and Stella Rose!
More About: Happy

Buy From A Breeder
2008-02-13 21:46:00
The New York Times is a little slow on the uptake and is just now reporting on PeTA's disgraceful advertising campaign featuring dead dogs in body bags and the message that if you buy your dog you are directly killing a dog in a shelter.Mind you, this message is coming from people who kill 97% of the dogs they get their hands on, so scolding you for "buy one, kill one" when their own kill rate is adopt one out, kill two hundred and fifty is just slightly disingenuous.I actually find their KKK comparison rather hilarious and will comment on that new ad in a future post.But now is as good of a time as any to remind you that you're committing no sin by buying your dog from a breeder.That's right. I said it. Don't "rescue" your next pet, buy one from a responsible breeder. The "shelter" establishment in this country is a disgrace, filled with wack-job people who kill animals to "save" them. Animals that are only killed because the shelter industry is inept and has betrayed its found...

BC/R&F: Viggo Mortensen
2008-02-13 20:49:00
I began the Border Collies of the Rich and Famous series with the decidedly sub-par performance of one-time BC owner Ellen DeGeneres. We turn things around this time with exemplar Border Collie companion, Viggo Mortensen .Viggo is a modern renaissance man, flexing his creative muscle in theater and film acting, music, poetry, photography, and painting.Born in New York to an American Mother and Danish father; Viggo was raised in Venezuela, Argentina, Denmark, and the United States. He speaks English, Danish, Spanish, Norwegian, French, Italian, and Swedish.Worldly yet grounded; famous yet private; an actor yet genuine; you might say that Viggo's choice of the Border Collie is a fitting reflection of his own versatility and uncompromising nature. Whether on a working ranch in South America or on the Red Carpet in Hollywood, Viggo seems to possess a skill set that isn't ever fully utilized at any one time or any one place; much like the Border Collie.The definitive Border Collie in Vi...

I have to buy WHAT?
2008-02-12 21:11:00
Here's a post that I wrote up a few months ago that I neglected to publish at the time.Breeding and not-breeding dogs has made for some classic conversations at the check out line when I'm buying stuff for the pups.I thought I had it bad in college, when I was the Financial Manager for a 50 person house and the Kitchen Manager (a woman) and I would make trips to Costco to buy several hundred dollars worth of junk food once or twice a month to stock the kitchen. We'd get looks and comments from people in line, as we pulled up three flat bed carts, piled high with every sort of trans fat vector imaginable. We'd hear everything from, "No wonder he's fat," to "They must be Mormons with six kids." And it wasn't much better telling people you were buying for 50 people.... they'd usually respond, "What, are you in some kind of cult?" "No, it's the Italian House, it's kind of like a fraternity, but for students who take Italian" just didn't seem to be the answer they wanted.The fi...

Signs of the Apocalypse I
2008-02-11 08:48:00
Do you know what incompetent educators do when they utterly fail to teach children English in an English speaking country, children of parents who speak no other language? They decide that they'll elevate the garbage those children do speak to language level and declare victory. Give it a catchy name like "ebonics" and give it no more thought. Problem solved.Oh but we'd be myopic if we thought ebonics was the first time. The same process degraded Latin into Italian over a few hundred years and when someone with an IQ above room temperature wrote something decent in the new mongrel dialect, Italian's place was secured as a language in history. Word. ...err...Parola!If you don't like test results, you can either raise the level of performance or you can lower expectations. At every step our Teacher's Union has fought for lowering expectations and getting rid of any kind of test, benchmark, or measure of performance that would make them accountable for doing their job. We can't f...
More About: Signs , Apocalypse

On Parvo, Patents, and Press Releases
2008-02-10 19:03:00
A self serving press release from Oklahoma State University has the dogblogosphere all aflutter at the "new" killer strain of Parvo.Turns out that the CPV 2c strain is nothing new, your dogs are as safe as they ever were, and the vague and misleading language of the press release is to blame for the hysteria.The press release has one real purpose, to brag about the filing of a patent on the "characteristics" of CPV 2c. Patents on such things are used by universities to make money off of any drugs or products that are developed by themselves or others. It's part of an intellectual property land grab where you file patents on anything that you think will be more valuable than the cost of the patent application and then just hope that someone else will develop a product that uses the information you have a patent on. It doesn't matter if they did their own research or even knew about your patent, if they get a home run product and it's related, then you sue them for big pieces of th...
More About: Press , Press Releases

On Thin Ice, Again
2008-02-08 05:42:00
I'm saying this again, because obviously the message didn't get through the first time. Don't go out on to the ice after your dog.Only days after my first post, a woman ran after her dog, fell in, and had to be rescued. They both survived no thanks to the owner.Now, just yesterday, another owner who "knew better" went out on the ice, fell in, screamed her head off like a "little girl," and had to be rescued by a teenaged boy, Jared Vigil, who was going home sick from school (apparently not sick enough to hinder his heroic rescue).Guess what, the dog, "Willow," is just fine despite the owner, Connie Oswald, almost killing herself and getting a young man to go out onto the ice after her risking his own well being. She didn't have a leash, she didn't have a cell phone, and she didn't call for help, flag down a passing motorist, or run to a nearby house. At least she slid out to the dog on her belly, but um, that's what the pros do when they have ladders, ropes, tethers, and a wh...

600 Dead Puppies
2008-02-07 22:18:00
Oklahoma State University has discovered over inflated reports old observations that a nasty strain of Parvo has recently jumped the Atlantic Ocean and is now being found unremarkably widespread in the United States.Unlike local strains of Parvo, the Canine Parvo Virus type 2C (CPV-2c) strain can effect adult dogs, even those previously vaccinated against Parvo as the strain is not included in current vaccines. That means that every dog in the United States is a potential victim of this nasty virus that attacks the dog's heart and digestive tract.A patent has been filed on the characteristics of the U.S. CPV-2c. The team reports that 500 samples were submitted from locations in south California to south Florida. The published paper has been presented at national level meetings and internationally in Italy and Melbourne, Australia. However, their work is not done.The OSU team filed a patent on the "characteristics" of this strain. No big deal. There is as of yet no evidence to sugge...
More About: Dead , Puppies

Rabies: Blame Canada
2008-01-25 08:43:00
Mere months after Canine Rabies has been declared defeated in America, the Canadians have to crash the Rabies Epidemic After-Party.Officials believe at least 60 people came into contact with a rabid dog on Jan. 3. The infected puppy was being held with 10 to 12 other dogs. They have all been sold and health officials believe they have all been infected with rabies. At least three different breeds are involved. The infected puppy and one other dog in the group have died, Susan Sperling, spokesperson with Toronto Public Health confirmed to CTV.ca....Officials are looking for three border collies, one yorkie cross, a maltese and an unknown breed.And what could be worse for a Border Collie, famed for their unsurpassed gray matter, than to be infected with Rabies? Not much. And what's with the image accompanying that CTV article? Nothing says "rabid dog" like a frolicking Border Collie Puppy:Despite Canine Rabies being eradicated in the United States, there are many forms of rabies, suc...
More About: Canada , Blame

Heath Ledger, Human Border Collie, Dead
2008-01-23 00:09:00
Australian actor (in America) Heath Ledger was found dead today in Mary-Kate Olsen's New York apartment. And why, you ask, would a blog about Border Collie controversy and news be covering the death of an actor?Well, because Heath Ledger is a border collie, of course. Well, at least according to the book Men are Dogs: In the Best Possible Sense by Molly Hewitt.In addition to having a "fairly broad skull, soft flowing mane that frames the face, gentle eyes that see more than they let on, and broad muscular hindquarters," I suspect that Ledger's role as a bisexual cowboy who spent a summer herding sheep in Wyoming played a large part in his selection as "Famous [Human ] Border Collie."Sheeple will note that since Ledger is a pretty boy, was from Australia, and was only acting at herding sheep, he should be listed as a famous "Barbie" Collie instead.Not that it matters now, the poor chap is dead. Bon Voyage.
More About: Dead

Grizzly Man Mockumentary
2008-01-21 07:18:00
Animal Planet ran a marathon of the Werner Herzog documentary “Grizzly Man” today against the AFC and NFC championship games. I assume most of you watched football. So did I. But seeing the movie on the small screen once again was a sign that I should repost a little rant I did on the film that caused quite a stir on the IMDB message boards (a producer of the film even contacted me, mostly in agreement). The rant is a bit long, but rants are a quick read since you don’t have to think too hard and just go with the flow… kind of like Timothy Treadwell. Here’s a snippet from the first salvo where I ask the question, who was the worst actor in the documentary (there aren’t supposed to be actors in documentaries, by the way). There’s a bit near the end where I note the similarities between Treadwell and Steve Irwin. This was written before Irwin’s death, in a prophetic observation of impending doom caused by a lust for fame doing stupid antics with wild animals. I wanted ...

Anarchists of Puppy-dom
2008-01-15 12:28:00
Raising a Border Collie puppy is a true joy, or perhaps a true terror, depending on your perspective. Chuck Terzella of Unconfirmed Sources falls into the later camp:I know, I know, the first thing people think when they see a little puppy, Border Collies included, romping and playing is, "Oh, how adorable!" Right. That's just what they want you to think. It's all part of their nefarious plot. You see, Border Collies are the anarchists of Puppy -dom, dedicated to the total destruction of all you hold dear... antique furniture, sleep, shoes, Persian carpets, you name it. Their weapons are varied and unexpected. Of course there are teeth and claws, the usual implements of destruction. Add to that IED's (Improvised Excretory Devices) and biological urine based sneak attacks that make body armor such as shoes an absolute necessity at all times. You can never, ever let your guard down.Read more...